We already know that we should eat less meat for the sake of the planet – the United Nations has said reduced meat consumption would help curb greenhouse emissions. While many ardent environmentalists are vegetarian, initiatives like Meatless Monday are trying to encourage all of us to do our part, as well.

So meat production helps cause global warming. But did you know that climate change might also affect the quality of meat? According to New Scientist: “Pork chops will become soggier and paler as the world warms, while steaks could be dark and smelly”.

It’s all to do with the effects of heat on the animal’s energy, or glycogen, reserves. The flesh from pigs that become heat-stressed on the way to the slaughterhouse will acidify more quickly, so the meat resembles “soggy white blotting paper”. While heat-stressed cows run out of glycogen before slaughter, darkening their meat.

It all adds up to less “mmm” and more “hmm”.

Millions of cattle and sheep make long sea journeys every year in cramped, over-heated conditions as part of the livestock trade. So far the best solution scientists have been able to come up with has been to spike the drinking water with sports energy drinks. But if we are to keep eating meat in a climate-changed world, we are going to have to come up with a better solution.

We could start by scaling back meat consumption – most of us could handle more plant foods in our diet anyway – and focusing on quality over quantity. Then we could decentralise the meat industry, rear livestock in natural conditions on farms, transport them to a local abbatoirs only a few miles away and eat them close to where they were raised. Doesn’t it just make sense?

Image: The Busy Brain

Anyone who grew up on Westerns and novels such as Little House on the Prairie and My Antonia would be hard-pressed to recognise the Great Plains today. The woods and grasslands known to the native Americans and the early pioneers have largely made way for suburban sub-divisions and industrial agriculture, with a co-dependent duo of grain crops and cattle destined for feedlots.

There is a movement afoot to restore the American West to its former glory and two animal species are taking centre stage.

The first is the American buffalo, a species that is once again roaming the plains and also gracing American dinner tables.

The second, rather more controversially, is the grey wolf.

Alongside this comes the return of a diverse array of native grasses – the “miles of copper-red grass” immortalised by Willa Cather. This is not just about a return to the past – in fact, according to the Buffalo Commons, a biodiverse native prairie is also an excellent carbon sequester.

There once were over 400 million acres of wild prairie grasslands in the central part of North America. The backbone of the Buffalo Commons movement is the work – over a period of decades – to re-establish and re-connect prairie wildland reserves and ecological corridors large enough for bison and all other native prairie wildlife to survive and roam freely, over great, connected distances, while simultaneously restoring the health and sustainability of our communities wherever possible so that both land and people may prosper for a very long time.

The eco-system will not truly return to its original state without the reintroduction of the original predators, namely the grey wolf.

The Big Bad Wolf is not a popular figure in the American psyche, and even less so for the nation’s farmers. But in some parts of the country, reintroducing the wolf is exactly what is being done. Park rangers have slowly been releasing breeding pairs of wolves into Yellowstone National Park since the 90s, for example.

It’s all very well restoring the native prairie on public land, but what about private land? And how will communities support themselves without farming?

It’s hoped that eco-tourism can partly replace farming in some areas. Yet farmers are very much part of the picture, not only through personal involvement in the Buffalo Commons on the perimeter of their properties, but also by rearing buffalo for meat.

True restoration of the Great Plains relies on ranchers coming on board and ranchers rely on Americans choosing to eat buffalo rather than beef. This means that even private farmland can be planted with native grasses and form part of a healthy, functioning eco-system. Buffalo are ideal to raise from a farmer’s perspective – their preferred food grows naturally in this part of the world and they are perfectly suited to the climate.

If you are vegetarian and your dietary protein comes from organic tofu or lentils rather than any sort of meat, that’s great. If it doesn’t, there are very good arguments for at least cutting down on the meat you eat, but you might also want to consider buffalo.

It doesn’t sound like eating buffalo is any great hardship for a meat eater. Eating Well magazine, which offers several enticing recipes, describes the meat as lean and healthy, possessing a “more intense, deep flavour than beef”. Yet the true satisfaction surely comes from knowing that, by consciously choosing buffalo instead of beef, you are directly playing a role in the restoration of the Great Plains.

Image: Nicolas T

The U.S. is one very carnivorous nation. But what if, just for one day, everyone went vegetarian?

Well, according to a Huffington Post article by Kathy Freston, just one meat free day in the U.S. would save nearly 100 billion gallons of water, 1.5 billion pounds of crops, 70 million gallons of gas, and 33 tons of antibiotics.

Wow. All that just for eating pasta instead of pork chops. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. After all, the Livestock’s Long Shadow report, released recently by the UN, has already concluded that the meat industry is responsible for almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transportation systems.

These numbers have definitely given me food for thought (sorry). A regular meat eater – I admit it! -  it’s got me convinced that I should try and have at least one meat-free day a week.

Image: Steven Fernandez

The web was buzzing with speculation – who was behind it? On April 1, Ben & Jerry’s admitted they were the creators of the site and they also conducted sampling in New York City, which you can see at the link above. Passers-by were uniformly horrified at the prospect of drinking milk from cloned cows.

All this may seem far-fetched, but in January 2008, the FDA ruled that milk and meat products from cloned animals are safe for human consumption. According to this article, producers are now selling semen from cloned cows, so clones could already be in the food chain.

People are appalled, and companies as diverse as Kraft, Wal-mart, Tyson, PCC, and Ben & Jerry’s have pledged not to use products from cloned animals knowingly. But “knowingly” is the key word here.

How are producers or consumers to know unless we have a national tracking system in place? This tracking system is what Ben & Jerry’s is pushing for. Hopefully the hoax will help raise a public ruckus around the cloning issue. But the tracking system is a band-aid. It’s our government’s job to serve us. If the public doesn’t want products from cloned animals, it’s unacceptable that they were approved in the first place.

Can someone tell me why we need cloned cows anyway? It worries me to think of the biological vulnerability inherent in a species with identical genes. It’s difficult to see any potential for public good in cloning of this nature.

Conservation of fossil fuel, reduced methane emissions, less water waste – now saving your eyesight can be added to the list of reasons to give up red meat.

Researchers at the Centre for Eye Research, part of the University of Melbourne Department of Ophthalmology in Australia, say they’ve found a link between age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss, and the frequent consumption of red meat.

Their study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who ate red meat 10 times a week (compared to those who ate red meat five times a week) were nearly 50 percent more likely to develop AMD in old age.

Between 1990 and 1994 Dr. Elaine Chong and her colleagues followed 6,734 people between the ages of 58 and 69 who were living in Melbourne, Australia. When the study ended, between 2003 and 2006, the researchers did retina exams to evaluate signs of AMD. The results yielded 1,680 cases of early AMD and 77 cases of late AMD.

A news flash for those of you who just can’t give up meat: the study also yielded that those who ate chicken at least three times a week were 50 per cent less likely to develop AMD.

Image: tibchris

Fluff and Nonsense: PETA Denies Fish Exist (October 2008)

Because much of the natural world is generally eww gross and lacking in cuteness, PETA are eager to helpfully rename the birds and the beasts so they’re more appealing. First to get a makeover? Fish. They’re now called Sea Kittens, and the official website plasters on the sentiment with a trowel, featuring a storybook containing heavily anthropomorphic fish suffering at the hands of evil humans. There are some good points here – such as how fish are generally a lot smarter than we give them credit for – but as usual, they’re buried in fathoms of uncompromising bluster. PETA wants to stop all fishing immediately, or ideally yesterday. But what would our cute, meowing “Land Fish” eat for their dinner?

It’s all so ripe for ridicule. So here’s some. Fin.

Breeding Trouble: A Canine Klan Clanger (February 2009)

The End Justifies The Means, right? During their protest at the recent Westminster Dog Show, PETA members dressed up in Klu Klux Klan garb while they handed out leaflets, equating dog-breeders to the infamous militant white supremacists and claiming that selective breeding exacerbates pet overpopulation problem. (PETA’s opponents have already labeled them hypocrites on this issue).

So how did the public react when it was approached by people dressed as hooded racists?

“Most passers-by seemed more puzzled than offended, though those who didn’t stop walked away thinking they really had seen the KKK.”

- AP, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

Oh well. Any reaction is a good reaction, right? Best foot forward, PETA.

Shock PETA Advert Featuring Women Wearing Clothes (January 2009)

Sex sells. And in this case, it sells vegetables – or it would do, if NBC had agreed to air PETA’s sleazefest of a Superbowl advert. In it, young women don skimpy outfits and gyrate ecstatically around groceries, accompanied with the tagline “Studies Show Vegetarians Have Better Sex” (because they’re generally slimmer and healthier, the “logic” goes).

So how did it get onto Youtube and the like? Because getting it rejected was the plan all along, of course, and as soon as NBC gave it a thumbs-down, the PETA marketing machine sprung into action. Sexist? You bet - but it’s all in a good cause (and it’s not as if they were naked, because that would be grossly demeaning. Ah, right). Meanwhile, women across the world find themselves too embarrassed to be seen shopping for vegetables in public, and send the men out instead. Thanks a bunch, PETA.

Michael Vick Fails To Score: PETA’s Version of Redemption (January 2009)

For former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, it’s not been a good couple of years. In 2007 he was convicted of running a dog-fighting ring on his property in Surrey County, Virginia – and he’s currently serving a 23-month federal prison sentence. In 2008 Vick filed for bankruptcy (just two years earlier, he was amongst the top ten richest athletes in America), and his former employers recently washed their hands of him, scuppering his chances of continuing his career when he’s released.

Cue PETA. They offered Vick the chance to feature in an advert condemning dog-fighting – on condition he filled out an animal empathy test, marked out of 100. Vick agreed…and scored 73.5%. And we know this because PETA not only released the score, but published a pdf of Vick’s answers on their website. Sorry, Michael, you’ve been taken for a ride. It’s a stunt to further sully your reputation (if that’s possible). Meanwhile, we suspect PETA would rate poorly on our Contrite Human Being Empathy Test.

Cooking Mama Knows Best While PETA Skips A Key Ingredient (November 2008)

If you can’t get through to the adults, target the kids. There’s a game on the Nintendo DS handheld gaming console called “Cooking Mama” (Majesco Entertainment), in which the elements of meal-preparation (vegetable chopping & peeling, food preparation and so on) are turned into mini-games played against the clock. PETA’s beef (so to speak) is with the use of meat in the game – so they released their own blood-soaked, thoroughly disturbing version aimed at…er, well, we don’t know who it’s aimed at. Meat eaters will love it, that’s for sure. Majesco recently responded thus:

“{Mama says:] Like any accomplished cook, I create my recipes to appeal to a broad range of tastes and preferences…while Mama is not a vegetarian, she fully supports the humane treatment of animals.”

In other words, Mama advocates tolerance. Now there’s a message for our kids. Unfortunately, these five stunts are only the latest in a long history of ridiculous pranks from PETA.

Additional: By no means all of PETA’s actions are founded on shock tactics, infringements on human dignity and general negativity. (If they were, the stunts listed above wouldn’t be so frustrating.) Their recent positive action to buy up stock in traditionally meat-heavy fast food industries is something we’ll be following with interest, since anything that directly turns the American diet around gets our vote. More like this, please.

Images: jon hanson / -=RoBeE=- / zenera / nineball2727 / MoonSoleil.

Everyone has heard the factoid about cow farts: The methane from cattle passing gas is apparently a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. (Though apparently cattle burps are an even bigger problem).

It sounds like something you’d see on Snopes but it’s actually true. And believe it or not, scientists are trying to fix it by tinkering with the animals’ diets. Even if cattle eat a natural diet of grass – which applies to so few modern farmed cattle anyway – apparently there’s a lot they can do by introducing new grasses and clovers.

Reducing meat or cutting it out altogether is one of the most effective ways you can tackle global warming, not just because of the flatulence but also because of the energy and land needed to grow animal feed.

However, if you are looking for a red meat fix with a (relatively) clear conscience, proponents want you to try kangaroo. The iconic Australian marsupials might be cute but they are also popular eating – a lean red meat not wholly unlike venison.

Now there’s another reason to eat them – apparently, kangaroos have a far more genteel digestive system so that flatulence problem does not arise. They’re reared on the land, rather than intensively farmed. Their soft paws do not damage the land and cause erosion, which can be a problem with hard-hooved animals such as cattle, especially in Australia.

Importing meat from the other side of the world is never going to be a green solution and I’m not sure if kangaroo farming would work in other countries without such vast land resources. But if you’re in Australia, you might want to consider buying kangaroo meat for yourself or as pet food.

Not everyone agrees that eating kangaroo is a good idea. Maybe it’s not the whole answer, but it’s certainly worth thinking creatively about how we can break the meat habit or get our fix in more environmentally benign ways.

Image: Mr. Imperial

America is the king of King Size, the cream of the crops, the place where portions are out of all proportion. When it comes to food, the United States is one of the most influential countries in the world. But what will happen if the rest of the world adopts American food habits? In short: it can’t. Here are nine incredible facts about the incredibly unsustainable diet we call the Standard American Diet.

Meat

Meat production is environmentally problematic. The emissions are worse than your car. The ethical issues are worse than those in any Ed Norton film.

Oh, the resources. Meat is so packed with protein and fats that a stomachful is much more than you need. And there’s the fact that making meat requires vast amounts of food and cleared land. Problems abound – but so does the demand for meat, despite it being patently clear that we need to eat less of it.

According to the New York Times, the world’s total meat supply in 2007 was 284 million tons. Since Americans eat an average of 8 ounces of meat every day – or over 180 pounds a year – this means that if the entire population of the world switched to American meat-eating habits, it would require around 550 million tons a year. Put another way – we’d need two planet Earths to produce enough meat to feed everyone.

Sheer Calories

Asking the calorie needs of the average human being is a little like asking how long a piece of string is – but as a broad, shot-in-the-dark figure that neglects to account for fitness, exercise, metabolism and a host of other factors, the average human male needs around 2,500 calories and the average woman about 2,000. That’s what we need to function. Any extra gets stored away by our bodies for a rainy day.

Americans are not efficient eaters. The calories consumed per day by the average American in 2008 was 3,750 (in a population of 303 million), according to the World Resources Institute. Compare this with the 2,500-calorie average in India (population – 1,147 million). Put thus, the food consumed by Americans could feed 39% of India’s population – even though America contains a quarter of the people.

Right now, world hunger is a pressing issue. Some people aren’t even getting the minimum they need to survive. So the question of what would happen if everyone ate the same calories as Americans…is meaningless.

Salt

Ah, sodium chloride, how we love you. We equate you with wisdom and experience (”seasoned”) and honesty (”salt of the earth”), and we sprinkle you over every meal. Yet you’re one of our unhealthiest obsessions.

While the likes of the American Heart Association recommend a daily intake of no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium (or around a teaspoonful), the average American consumes double that amount (maybe even higher). For many the result is high blood pressure or hypertension – and sufferers of this life-threatening condition need to cut back further to around 1,500mg. Yet salt continues to sneak past, thanks to its widespread use in processed foods (our bodies need salt and we’re hardwired to enjoy the taste of it – a fact outrageously exploited by snack-food manufacturers).

In 2006, world salt production was an estimated 240 million tons. Of this, around 17% goes towards making edible salt. If the entire world switched to eating 12g of salt a day, that would be around 30 million tons of salt, or just 12.5% of total world production levels. There’s the worry – it could happen. (The reason is that world salt production is higher than ever – in fact it appears to have tripled since 1960’s estimated 85 million tonnes).

The long term health consequences of 12g a day for everyone would be catastrophic. Imagine a world population that routinely suffered from asthma, blood pressure at a stroke-inducing level, ulcers, dehydration, renal failure and an elevated risk of obesity…and those are just the effects medical science feels unanimously confident about.

Images: nexus icon / The Busy Brain / laurenatclemson / kevindooley

Image: striatic

Let’s pretend we have a mutual friend. We’ll called him Peter.

There’s a lot to like about Peter: he’s deeply concerned about his impact on the environment, he donates time to local community projects, he’s thoughtful, charismatic and likeable. But there’s something odd about Peter, something deeply Out To Lunch – and every so often, this weirdness springs out of him. He builds a floodlit shrine out of recycled credit cards outside the local Walmart and surrounds it with pictures of flowers and animals. He paints all the streetlights green within a 20-mile radius. He throws miniature wooden oil-derricks at cars as he cycles to work. In short, Peter would be an admirable, inspiring pillar of the community…if he didn’t behave like an utter fruitcake.

It’s how we feel about People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Their investigations into animal testing and cruelty deserve our respect and our support. PETA’s principles? We admire them. PETA’s methods? Well, not so much. The organization has run more stunts than Evel Knievel – and while it’s always a blast to see what heights of lunacy they’ve scaled recently, we rather wish they wouldn’t. (Their work is just too important to be discredited by something ill-judged).

With that in mind, let’s look at 7 of their most notoriously awful publicity stunts.

Image: XWRN

A Grave Error: Playing Chicken With KFC (January 2008)

Upon discovering where Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland Sanders (above) is buried, PETA did what any of us might have done in a heartbeat, which was to purchase a plot of land within the cemetary, erect a fake headstone dedicated to someone who is in fact alive and well, and inscribe a poem on the stone which secretly spells out “KFC Tortures Birds“. Unsurprisingly this ruffled a few feathers: KFC described it as “a disgustingly disrespectful way to disgrace the resting place of the departed”. We sympathize. (Still, you have to admire their pluck).

Bull in a china shop: Winning New Friends in India (January 2008)

“PETA blindfolds Ghandi.” There’s a headline to make you spit your drink. Bypassing diplomatic channels and cultural respect, PETA went straight for the jugular in their protest against the Tamil practice of jallikatu or bull-taunting. While everyone was looking the other way, three PETA protesters leapt up and flung a blindfold round a statue of Mahatma Ghandi in Coimbatore’s Ghandi Park. Local authorities took a dim view, throwing the book at PETA and blaming them for “creating religious ill-feeling, defaming the national leader, trespassing and also [infingements of the] Tamil Nadu Open Places Prevention of Disfigurement Act.” Meanwhile, the real issue (and there is a real issue) gets associated with fringe activists. Way to bring it to the table, guys.

Image: tanakawho

The Fur Flies: Coats Sent To Iraq and Given To The Homeless (2004 to Present)

While they’re most famous for their anti-fur stance, PETA have adopted the practice of giving away the fur that is donated to them. In 2004 this included fur coats sent to suffering people in Iraq. A similar measure – one deplored by other anti-fur protest groups – is PETA’s “fur kitchens” which give away coats to homeless people. You could argue this is a caring, humanitarian measure – until you factor in the following quote from PETA’s President Ingrid Newkirk: “When the homeless are wearing fur, you know fur has hit rock bottom.”

Streaking Ahead: PETA’s Naked Ambition

One of PETA’s trademarks is nudity. Nary a month goes by without somebody famous donning their birthday suit to highlight the cause célèbre of PETA vs. fur clothing. It’s a bit of fun, a bit of titillation and a lot of exposure (as it were) for the person stripping off for the public eye. It’s expected of them – and when it doesn’t quite happen, as in the recent case of Amanda Beard, it raises eyebrows. But for potential eyebrow height, it’s difficult to top the sight of naked PETA members lying in flower-lined coffins to protest against Avian Flu. However, this manages it.

Image: OiMax

Milking Controversy: PETA’s Ice-Cream Boob (September 2008)

Three months back, Swiss restaurant owner Hans Locher announced he would be preparing dishes using human breast milk. Spotting a bandwagon with room to sit, PETA then sent a public letter to Ben And Jerry’s asking why they can’t follow suit by replacing the cow’s milk in their ice cream with human milk.  Suspecting that their sales might suffer, B & J’s refused (known as the Ross Geller response).

Interning with PETA: It’s A Wrap (June 2008)

To work for PETA, you have to be ready to take life on the chin. In the case of an intern and a volunteer in June of this year, you have to be ready to be liberally spattered with fake blood, shrink-wrapped to a cardboard sheet and endure an hour in the baking (80 degrees+) midday sun. No animals were harmed during the production of this stunt, but volunteer Shawn Herbold noted that she was “in pain and feeling nauseated” halfway through her shift. Some people just love to complain.

Image: MikeLicht:NotionsCapital.com

$1 Million: A Chance to Shmeat New People? (2008 onwards)

Taking a firm stance against the way animal meat is produced for consumption (and we’re right beside PETA on this), the organization has offered a $1 million prize to anyone who can create vat-grown meat as an alternative (er…PETA, you go that way and we’ll go this way). It’s claimed that it will act as a catalyst for developing truly viable in vitro “shmeat”. Salon nicely outlines why this is sloppy thinking…and anyway, isn’t it yet another example of the curse of Things That Look Like Other Things?

PETA – please, enough.

(Oh, we’re not naïve. Articles like this one are exactly why PETA members make fools of themselves – all to get their message across. But do you think antics like these are helping that message – or hindering it?)

You heard it from the vegetarian: bring on the hog farming.

Russ Kremer, also known as the Pope of Pork, is holding his own as a smalltime Missouri hog farmer. Unlike the huge industrial meat operations that have put a lot of small farmers out of business, Kremer treats his animals ethically and with respect, makes sure they have plenty of space to be healthy and active and feeds them a natural hog diet ““ drug and antibiotic-free. Kremer really is a pope of sorts – the former successful factory farmer is so deeply invested in his purpose, he hasn’t had time to get married or raise children.

Kremer and other pork farmers in his region formed a cooperative and began distributing their natural meat  – processed the old-fashioned way, without chemicals – under the label Heritage Acres.

This is great news for conscious meat eaters everywhere, and for vegetarians like me. Although I don’t eat meat, it’s great to see that those who choose to eat meat are looking for compassionate, sustainable options. The story is really worth reading, because “formed” is an awfully small word to accurately convey the difficulties these determined farmers had to deal with in order to raise meat in a fashion that used to be the norm.

Image: jontidmarsh

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