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| Tuesday, March 24, 2009 |
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More on Meat and Sustainability -- and a Challenge to Environmentalists
By Monica @ 3:54 PM   
I've had several diligent people forward me this news story via email over the past few days. It's a popular summary of a new "study" that "proves" that red meat causes cancer. The particular claims with regard to this article have already been thoroughly rebutted elsewhere and I have it on Dr. Eades' own word that he is going to blog on this study as well. The authors of this study need to go back and take a good statistics course and learn how to control other dietary variables correctly.
But now I get to my point. Interestingly, this "red meat causes cancer" article heavily mixes "dietary" science (not that the dietary science is even good) with "advocacy" science. In other words: not only is meat bad for us, it's bad for the environment. Here we go again. Articles such as these are why I recently blogged on this topic of meat and the environment here and here. Some people may not care, but I think it's important to evaluate these claims to see whether they are actually true. The idea that meat eating is unsustainable is appearing more and more in the popular press, and the message is getting shriller and shriller.
Someone whom I can't remember once said, "Advocacy science is not science." I think there's a great deal of truth to that statement. When we become advocates of something, it can cloud our judgment and objectivity and create a confirmation bias. (This is also true for "paleo" dieters and meat eaters.) We should always be on the lookout for deviations from our assumptions -- unless, of course, they are the most basic of facts.
Thankfully, I am not the only blogger who has recently picked up on this topic of meat and the environment. Here are some excerpts from an enlightening post by Robb Wolf entitled Meat, Global Warming and Markets: The Fish paper starts off with some dismissive language about the “over-hyped” benefits of fish oil…then changes tac(sic) completely and begins hand wringing about fish-stocks and sustainability. Oweee-kayyy. Tens of thousands of studies citing the benefits of n-3’s, synergy with what we know about our ancestral diet, the ONLY cited reason for the aparent(sic) health of the Inuit on their ancestral diet…and it’s all han(sic)-waved away, never explained…and the rest of the paper is focussed(sic) on the hot topic of global warming and sustainability! Keep this in mid as we look at a clinical intervention of the paleo diet in humans. In this paper a represnetitive(sic) paleolithic diet is compared to the the much vaunted mediteranian(sic) diet…in a sick population of folks WITH ischemic heart disease. It’s worth noting that the paleo-nay-sayers have whined for years: “there is no evidence! We need clinical studies!!” Well…here is a clinical trial showing compelling evidence for the superiority of a paleo diet over a medeteranian(sic) diet…and the main critiques of the paper focus on sustainability, not the validity of the science at hand. Here is a similar study with similar, non-science related critiques which focus instead on environmental issues and sustainability. Before I go on I want to come clean with what my political leanings are: Lover of free-markets, strongly identify with the Liberatarian(sic) party. This puts me squarely in a position to constantly piss-off and annoy left-leaning hippies and religious right-wingers alike. If you can piss nearly everyone off, you know you are onto something good. So, on the one hand I’me(sic) very happy to see the positive press these paleo clinical trials are getting. Right on the heels of that excitement and optimism is a sinking feeling when the discussion shifts to global warming, sustainability and the like. Why? Because it is shifting the argument just as the vegetarians are getting painted into a corner with no escape. The notion that our ancestral diet is the healthiest one, if right, will gain momentum and support. The only way to discredit this way of eating then is to throw up a boogey-man of fear and play on peoples guilt...
Fast forward to today, we still have the hand-wringing Malthusiast’s who are convinced we are all on a collision course with disaster unless we bocome low-fat vegetarians and export this lifestyle to everyone else on the planet. Much todo is made that a more meat based diet is unsustainable…but then again, modern farming practices rely on non-renewable fossil fuels, and as such plant based diets are apparently unsustainable also! Somehow the study authors find that a lacto-ovo diet is superior to alternative approaches…I’d like to dig through that study and see what they are using for numbers, but it just does not sit well. Interestingly, no one looks at the picture when we are talking grassfeeding and a more paleo type diet. Perhpas(sic) counter intuitively, a meat, fruit and vegetables diet appears to kill FEWER animals than a vegetarian, grain based diet…this throwing the least harm notion on it’s head. Also, small scale grassfed meat production appears to not only be sustainable, but also highly profitable. Most of the energy production of meat is tied up in grain production. Shift to grassfed meat and you remove this expensive and dirty process from the equation while also increasing the health of meat consumers. Can we feed everyone like this? Will global warming kill us all? The best way to control ALL these problems is some kind of population control and ironically, the best population control is prosperity. Rich nations have fewer children. The counter salvo from the Malthusiasts is that rich nations require a lot of energy…true, but we are only seeing the beginning of green, sustainable energy, and the main driving force here is an open market. India and China are bypassing decades of development the US went through and are comparitively much cleaner than we were. Speaking of sustainability…the US is headed for a serious problem with health/healthcare and the answer being bantied about is state funded healthcare…whcih has been a stunning failure everywhere else it’s been instituted, but we seem bent on this path…because in the words of Sen. Mcgovern(sic) “We must do something”. My main point here is that we need to tackle these issues ONE AT A TIME. When the vegetarians start shifting arguments mid-stream this is BS and it obscures the topic at hand. This is also the classic ploy of someone who is loosing an argument. My secondary point is that the “sustainability” issue is anything but clear and history has shown that markets and innovation trump doomsayers…no matter how badly they want the end-days to be at hand.
Indeed. In my previous writings, I hadn't even gotten into the idea that cattle might create a carbon sink on pasture, because foraging on grass spurs its growth via activation of the intercalary meristem. I would not be surprised if the articles Robb links above mention this point. I didn’t bother to do a search on Cambridge Scientific Abstracts to find articles that supported my point when I wrote about environmental effects of meat here and here, and more distantly in the past, here. Why didn't I do this? First, I already have a firm grasp of ecology (I have a bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees in biology with a heavy focus on courses in ecology). Thus, I can already deduce that the basic arguments from the vegan/environmentalist side do not add up. However, my arguments would have been more well-supported with evidence from quality peer-reviewed articles. (I stress the term quality since we all know there is a good deal of very bad science that has been nominally peer-reviewed.) So I have to thank Robb for providing these links to some apparently peer-reviewed sources in his post above. Though I haven't read them yet, I suspect they will provide a good start for more in-depth research.
I may do a heavier literature search at some point with better supporting documentation for the exact energy inputs for vegan/industrial, vegan/nonindustrial, meat heavy/industrial, and meat heavy/nonindustrial diets. Someone really needs to do such research and that research, whatever the findings, needs to be honestly publicized. Unfortunately, the popular press has a tendency to skew the reporting toward their own biased position. People have heard the "meat is unsustainable" claim so frequently that I fear it is growing a life of its own.
Regardless of the fact that it may be interesting to know how much energy is used to produce various types of foods, I don't understand why people are getting worked up about cattle and the potential effect of cattle on global warming. This is "science" that is conducted in a manner that is blinkered to evolutionary history, just like the dietary "science." It makes no sense, even if you think global warming is a significant long-term problem for humanity. What were pre-industrial levels of these supposed "greenhouse gases"? We know the answer for CO2, but methane is rarely discussed in global warming circles in this regard, though it is reputed to have a much more potent effect than CO2. Grass-fed cows may produce half the methane as grain-fed cows, but reasonable estimates are that there were, in pre-settlement days, anywhere from equal to twice the amount of bison biomass as the biomass in our current national cattle herd.
Thus, I pose the following questions to all enviromentalists who believe meat is a problem for the environment:
1) Was there a “methane” problem prior to white settlement during the days when millions of majestic bison roamed the plains of the Americas?
2) If the bison herd was producing roughly equivalent amounts of methane thousands of years ago in comparison to the national cattle herd today, why are we worrying about it? This is a natural level if you consider humans to be "non-natural" and the source of the problem here.
I have not yet heard or seen a logical rebuttal to these two basic questions. I'm open to reasonable arguments. Any takers?
Labels: Bison, Buffalo, Global Warming, Grass-fed, Just Say No To Bad Science, Meat Myths, Modern Ignorance, Nutritional Guidelines, Pastured
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| Sunday, March 8, 2009 |
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Thoughts on the Environmental Effects of Carnivory and Veganism
By Monica @ 5:24 PM
The popular press is awash with stories these days of how meat contributes to global warming and how many people are turning to veganism to reduce their "carbon footprint". There is even a proposed EPA tax on emissions from farm animals. From Scientific American articles, change.org pieces, and statements like this from respected nutritionists: "The more rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans you eat, the trimmer and healthier you will be – and with those same food choices you will help save the Planet Earth too", environmentalists, vegans, and animal rights activists are attacking any and all methods of raising animals -- whether for meat, dairy, or any other use -- as contributing to "climate change." But is it true?
Before I deal with actual truth or falsehood of such statements, I'd like to state my position on "climate change" so that I can be as transparent as possible here. First, I do believe the globe is probably warming, and that it might be happening at least partly from human activities. I honestly don't know. However, I don't believe that this in any way justifies the political "solutions" being proposed to "climate change" (cap and trade, coercive laws, etc.). I haven't actually investigated the global warming issue seriously from a scientific standpoint and don't really have time to do so right now. I used to be a dyed in the wool member of the global warming camp and have gone back and forth on the issue over the past, but the fact is that wherever the truth lies, my knowing it would make very little difference in my day to day activities, and thus, it ranks pretty low on my list of self-education priorities. If that disqualifies me in your mind from commenting on the issue of carnivory vs. veganism as it relates to "climate change", so be it. I believe peoples' actual arguments, and whether they are logical or not, are the things that we should be dealing with.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's consider the issue.
First, let's be honest. Vegans and vegetarians raise a number of valid points when it comes to meat production. Some of these are actual problems and some may not be problems but the facts remain: feedlots often contribute to waterway pollution, cattle release methane, and that the way in which the animals are raised (indoors, confined, unsanitary conditions, fed antibiotics as a routine measure because of the immense crowding and wrong food which both foster illness) is, by and large, inhumane. I've blogged on each of these points before, including the absurdity and wastefulness of subsidizing this inefficient method of raising animals through the EQIP program.
Further, it is absolutely true that as we increase in each level of the food chain from primary producer (plants, algae) to primary consumers eating primary producers, to secondary consumers (animals that eat primary consumers), to tertiary consumers (this last category are the top predators in any ecosystem and eat both primary and secondary consumers: wild cats, dogs, humans, eagles, etc. are examples) about 90% of the energy ingested as food is lost as heat and only 10% is converted to biomass. There are some variations in those numbers, but those are the basics: lots of energy lost as heat or waste products as you go up in the food chain/food web. This all makes perfect sense from the standpoint of physics and basic physiology/metabolism. It's so well-documented in the literature that I see no reason to provide references. No one disputes that most of the energy from the fuel in the internal combustion engine is lost as heat rather than converted into mechanical power. It's the same principle in living organisms.
This is the reason that in any given ecosystem, there's an immense amount of biomass of primary producers and hardly any biomass, comparatively speaking, of tertiary consumers, i.e. top predators. This is also the basis for claiming that meat contributes to global warming. After all, if you are running grass or grain through an animal before that animal food gets to a human, lots of the energy is lost as heat or waste. Waste products of respiration are CO2 and water (or CO2 and ethanol or lactic acid if you're a fermenter). One of the waste products of the bacteria in ruminants is methane. Of course, we all know that CO2 and methane are the alleged "bad actors" of "climate change." The logic of the vegan argument is that if you bypass eating the ruminants (or any other animal, for that matter) you are more efficient at converting the calories of primary production (plants) into biomass and you avoid the energy "wastage" and extra CO2 and methane production.
But there are just a few problems with this very simplistic line of argumentation. Let's address them.
First, the assertion that humans evolved as vegetarians, or that their most recent common ancestor was vegetarian, has been blown out of the water. Personally, I think a good vegan diet with proper supplementation and avoidance of processed food is probably head and shoulders about even the standard American diet. But that's not the point. The point is, should people have the right to eat the diet they are designed evolutionarily to eat, the diet that is in their own best interest? Or should they eat a vegan diet to "save the planet", in the words of Dr. McDougall? It's a valid question. If you believe a vegan diet is optimal, that's fine for you, but there are serious issues with the scientific basis of such an argument from an evolutionary and nutritional standpoint. And certainly such a diet shouldn't be foisted on humans everywhere for political reasons if the point of morality is to teach us how to enjoy life to its fullest (as opposed to sacrificing for someone or something else, ultimately suffering or dying sooner than necessary).
Let's take the issue of energy loss. Yes, it's true that lots of food energy is lost as heat when we eat animals. However, there are more subtle points to consider. How does the caloric intake differ between vegans and carnivores or even vegans and meat-heavy omnivores? If Good Calories, Bad Calories is any indication, those with carb-heavy (read: plant-heavy) diets are driven to ingest more calories. I've certainly found this to be true in my own experience. A meat-heavy diet, at least as far as my own personal experience, results in spontaneously reduced caloric intake of as much as 800 calories daily. That's something that is never accounted for in the "carbon footprint" calculations. And honestly, what quantity of greenhouse gases are produced by grain- and legume-fed vegetarians? Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot. Seriously, eating high-carb plant foods causes the production of more intestinal gas. I'm not sure what the chemical composition of that gas is, but the presence of the gas is something everyone who has switched from a high carb to a low carb diet, or spends a lot of time around bean-eating vegetarians, can amply attest to.
Moving on. Is most of the world's land arable and suitable for crop production? It is not. I've blogged about that before. In fact, this is considered a major problem of plant biotechnologists who develop breeding programs to develop crops for less than optimal conditions. Lots of the earth's land, however, is rangeland and quite suitable for animal production.
Another problem is the simplistic assumption about modern-day vs. ancient production of CO2 and methane from cattle. Actually, I'm not even sure the vegan "climate change" activists or their followers want to consider this. There are currently about 100 million head of cattle in the United States. Most of our cattle are grain-fed for at least part of their lives and grain-fed cattle produce about twice as much methane as grass-fed cows. However, they are not grain-fed their entire lives. My best estimate is that at any given point, around 25 million head are being fed this way. Estimates of the number of bison present in pre-settlement times is also as high as 100 million head, with bison being about twice as big as cows. I'm sure many people find it difficult to believe that the American continent could foster twice as much ruminant biomass as it currently does, but the fact is that the Americans plains soil was extremely fertile before modern grain- and soy-based agriculture washed much of it into the ocean, with enormous amounts of primary production (much of it underground in the form of prairie grass). I'm not sure how many head of bison were turned over yearly to predation or hunting. Today, approximately 1/4 of the national herd of cattle makes its way into the food chain yearly. But assuming that grass-fed bison produce similar amounts of methane to grass-fed cows, and that there could have been twice as much bison biomass as current cattle biomass, that means there were probably very similar amounts of methane being produced all along and that this hasn't changed much historically. This pretty much blows away the argument that we should consider cattle per se a significant problem when it comes to global warming.
Finally, let's consider the darling of the environmentalist/vegan movement: soy.
Let's be fair -- soy is a nitrogen fixing plant, meaning it can pull useless nitrogen gas from the air and turn it to valuable, fertilizing ammonia with the aid of bacterial endosymbionts in the root tissue. Even Thomas Jefferson recognized the value of using legume crops such as vetch to restore fertility to depleted soil. Still, soy is a plant with a shallow root system that results in soil erosion when grown in monoculture. Soy is often shipped up from South America, grown on land where rainforests once grew. Then, if the pure soybeans aren't eaten, and they usually aren't, they are processed in an extruder. Here is a picture of a soy extruder:
Hint: that puppy doesn't work on solar or wind power.
Now let's consider the grain-based diet that the vegans want us to go on. Any crop grown in the US today post-1950s in the era of subsidy-powered commodity agriculture requires vast amounts of ammonia fertilizer input through the Haber process. Animals could provide a much more balanced source of fertilizer, and played an important role in agriculture besides meat production prior to the 1950s. Long-term, there is simply no way to completely amend soil without farm animals if we want optimal plant (and thus, human) nutrition. These are the very animals many vegan activists would like to see eliminated to solve "climate change". Even that is absurd. Let's consider the Haber process, shall we? It is responsible for 1/4 of the world's nitrogen fixation and works by burning nitrogen and hydrogen gas through four rounds of heating to between 300-550 degrees C, to produce NH3.
Hint: the fuel for the Haber process does not come from solar or wind power.
OK, vegan activists for climate change. Please tell me which of the two options you think uses more fossil fuel: 1) The Haber process and the fuel required to transport the products of the Haber process to the fields? Or 2) locally raised animals depositing their dung directly on the fields, with all the necessary nutrients (not just nitrogen), as they did 50 years ago and as they still do on many family farms in the United States?
I hope I have demolished the idea that you have any idea how much carnivory vs. veganism truly contributes to "climate change" or "greenhouse gas" production without doing a lot more in-depth calculation in all of the areas mentioned above. Personally, I think my locally raised real bacon is a lot more environmentally friendly than the soy-based Smart Bacon grown with Haber-produced ammonia, shipped to the US, and then processed in an extruder which uses petroleum products. Here are the ingredients in Smart Bacon: Water, soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, textured soy protein concentrate, textured wheat gluten, less than 2% of: natural smoke flavor, natural flavor (from vegetable sources), grill flavor (from sunflower oil), carrageenan, evaporated cane juice, paprika oleoresin (for flavor & color), potassium chloride, sesame oil, spice extractives, fermented rice flour, tapioca dextrin, citric acid, salt. Look at the amount of processing involved. Many of the substances in bold are produced or extracted through an industrial process. How much fossil fuel is used to produce "environmentally friendly" products like Smart Bacon vs. real bacon? Want to bet?
Having fallen prey to "meat is bad for the environment" arguments myself in the past, it disturbs me to see these arguments advance. More and more people are adopting the idea that they will "save the planet" through veganism, often at the expense of their own health. It's fine if their choices stop with them, but ten years ago "cap and trade" would been inconceivable to most people. Today it's being offered up as an actual political "solution", and not a voluntary one. If someone had told me five years ago that the EPA would even consider taxing emissions from farm animals, I'd have laughed in your face.
In light of that, ask yourself whether any of the following is truly an exaggeration:
How long before our animal protein is rationed for the sake of "saving the planet"?
How long after that before vegans, animal rights activists, and environmentalists seriously push to limit or forbid raising livestock in the name of protecting the environment?
And how long after that before we're all forced to be vegan?
In my practical experience, many of the followers of the vegan movement who do so for environmental reasons are, for whatever reason, unable to understand or investigate the science behind the claims for their action. They are simply woefully ignorant. They aren't actually evil people. But the originators of such claims (PETA and others), those who can understand science and who either knowingly start or perpetuate lies for their own ideological ends at the expense of the truth, are hopelessly corrupt.
These lies need to be exposed. More than the simple truth is at stake. For some of us, our very sustenance depends on it.
HT for soy extruder picture: CheeseslaveLabels: Bison, Buffalo, Ethics, Global Warming, Government Idiocy, Grass-fed, Individual Rights, Meat Myths, Pastured, Subsidies
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| Friday, January 30, 2009 |
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The Real JunkFoodScience
By Monica @ 10:18 PM
A silly article about raw milk has been recently published in Clinical Infectious Diseases that ends with a completely inappropriate threat to medical professionals:
"...physicians, veterinarians, and dairy farmers who promote, or even condone, the human consumption of unpasteurized milk and dairy products may be at risk for subsequent legal action."
Every few years Clin Infect Dis publishes an article like this. I think such articles and news pieces will become more frequent as raw milk becomes more popular. The acknowledgments to this particular article thank none other than John Sheehan, BSc, Jd and FDA head of safety for milk and eggs and a raw milk foe, "for valuable discussions on the subject during the preparation of the manuscript."
I don't believe crediting a government regulatory agent is necessarily proof of ignorance or corruption. I am sure there are many honest people who work for regulatory agencies and I don't believe every piece of research produced or funded by government is evidence of corruption. However, the Weston A Price Foundation has already, point by point, rebutted Sheehan's Powerpoint slides on raw milk in a 71 page PDF file. It's quite a read and anyone interested in the whole "controversy" around raw milk should take a look.
Oftentimes bias it is not evident in news media pieces or peer-reviewed articles. This is the case with the current Clin Infect Dis article. It appears to be well-written and most of the points are likely true in the context of grain-fed confinement cows. But the authors of the article make several mistakes, so that the article winds up reading more a like a political position paper than an honest evaluation of the science. Let's go through the major points.
First, they don't really understand the microbial ecology of a milk product in the context of grass feeding. For instance, Listeria monocytogenes is relatively fragile in the face of other protective factors in unpasteurized milk such as lactoferrin and beneficial coliforms that outcompete pathogens. These factors are destroyed by pasteurization and sometimes allow remaining L. monocytogenes to take off. This is why the FDA has considered making ultrapasteurization mandatory. Heat resistant strains have evolved and regular pasteurization is no longer good enough. Almost all organic milk on the retail market is now ultrapasteurized.
Second, the authors are mired in the reductionistic pseudoscience of nutrition that ignores the effect of pasteurization on the function of various proteins in the milk (lactase, phosphatase, immunoglobulins). Good science is timeless, and these authors haven't gone to older papers demonstrating the benefits. Many people anecdotally report reductions in asthma, allergies, and lactose intolerance on raw milk vs. pasteurized milk. Actually, it's not even so much that the mainstream doesn't recognize the existence of these proteins. They do, because the pasteurization test is a negative phosphatase test. Instead, they simply claim that these proteins aren't necessary and don't add any value to the consumer, nutritive or otherwise. This is paternalism on steroids.
No mention is made of the difference in grass-fed milk and grain-fed milk with respect to vitamin content, particularly a vitamin first discovered by Weston Price in the thirties, now believed to be vitamin K2 M-4. Price showed that K2 M-4 was dependent on the method of feeding and was highest in the dairy produced from cows on rapidly growing spring grass. This is widely known among those knowledgeable about pastured methods of raising animals but it still relatively unacknowledged or unknown in medical and government circles (though not unknown in the medical literature at this point).
The authors also ignore the significant difference between milk from Holsteins used for all pasteurized grocery store milk and milk from other older breeds usually used for raw milk. The latter has higher butterfat content, and thus, fat-soluble vitamins. "Milk is milk and it all comes from cows" is the FDA's position. That's demonstrably wrong.
Finally, they ignore that while there may be more outbreaks from raw milk, such outbreaks are small and easily identifiable, unlike food-borne illness outbreaks from pasteurized milk. They also don't discuss the relative risks of various foods, and give the impression that raw milk on a per serving basis is more dangerous than pasteurized milk. I don't believe we really know what the relative risks are, but my understanding is that they are about the same on a per serving basis. The WAP Foundation presents some interesting numbers on this in their two rebuttals, linked above and below.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has recently released a rebuttal to the recent Clin Infect Dis article. Unfortunately, people like Sandy Szwarc at JunkFoodScience obviously haven't seen the rebuttal. Ms. Szwarc's piece is simply a point by point regurgitation of the Clin Infect Dis article. This is curious because from what I can see of her blog she usually looks for an opposing view and does not buy into hysteria. I think this speaks to the power of conventional wisdom in creating a bias in a person's mind.
"Sound science" is not a conspiracy, Ms. Szwarc says. Most science often isn't a conspiracy, but that's really irrelevant to evaluating whether the science is actually sound and unpoliticized. The "science" used by the mainstream researchers to justify their biased thoughts about many aspects of our food is not sound. It is based on faulty assumptions that have since been disproven either in the medical literature or by simple logic and/or it is too reductionistic. Most seriously, it is almost always performed outside the context of evolutionary biology or even the history of food science in the past century. Most nutritional science simply does not operate within an evolutionary framework. It's bad science. Ms. Szwarc's readers deserve a more critical analysis than the one she says she is providing in her blog header.
In the most recent Clin Infect Dis article, the authors state that raw milk consumers "unconsciously process information in a biased manner." They encourage public health officials and physicians to speak with one unified voice against raw milk, repeating the message over and over clearly until the consumer gets it.
In other words, the raw milk consumers are knuckleheads nearly unreachable by reason, while the conventional view is based in reason and science. As I've indicated above, the situation is more complex than the authors would like health professionals to believe. At the very least, the authors and health experts ought to be recommending that people source raw milk and heat it, or that the dairy industry ought to at least convert to grass-feeding to increase fat-soluble vitamin content so critical for development of children and continuing robust health into adulthood.
WAPF responds:
The authors suggest that unlike consumers with strongly held opinions, "experts" with strongly held opinions do not selectively seek out information supportive of their views or process it in a biased fashion, yet they themselves choose to discuss the ability of pasteurization to kill pathogens without acknowledging the ability of grass-feeding to prevent contamination; they themselves choose to discuss illnesses attributed to raw milk without admitting that more illnesses have been attributed to pasteurized milk; they themselves choose to discuss modern assays with little to no destruction of vitamins without accounting for older feeding studies showing dramatic reduction in their biological activity; and they themselves choose to conclude by threatening experts who do not select information and unconsciously process it exactly as they do with the heavy hand of the law. There is a word for this kind of double standard and it is called hypocrisy. Indeed. Just say no to bad science.
Labels: "Safety", De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Individual Rights, Modern Ignorance, Nutritional Guidelines, Pastured, Raw Milk, Vitamin K2
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| Sunday, December 21, 2008 |
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Pondering a Return of the Buffalo
By Monica @ 7:30 PM
I've been thinking about buffalo lately (I use the term "buffalo" loosely), partly because we've had some really amazing bison roasts in the past couple of weeks. We got them at Costco for about $5 per pound, a very reasonable price in my estimation. I prepare them in my slow cooker and they are amazingly tender and delicious. I would really love to eat some more bison -- particularly, different cuts besides roasts.
If you love beef and you haven't tried bison, you're missing out. I believe I read somewhere that the fatty acid profile is better than beef as well. Considering that by 1900 there were only a few hundred bison left in the world, I'm very grateful that they've been brought back from the brink of extinction and that the herds have been preserved in great enough numbers to now eat. And of course, they're impressive animals to just observe as well.
I've been pondering a return in the United States to a more grass-fed system of meat production, with Americans eating more meats instead of grains and sugars. While I'm sure a good portion of agricultural land will always be devoted to grains in America, I would personally welcome seeing more cattle and/or bison grazing on an open plain where soy and corn previously grew. That's just my personal preference -- but I do believe it would be much healthier for most Americans to eat more meat in place of soy and corn products. (It's not just a belief, the science is there.) And I certainly believe these more natural grazing systems replacing traditional monocultures in the midwest would be better for our environment and the health of the people living in the immediate area.
Whether or not there would ever be a huge consumer demand for bison is questionable. However, one has to consider why the bison went to the brink of extinction in the first place. It's not that the meat wasn't any good or there wasn't economic value to be had there. It was just that Americans preferred their cattle, for obvious reasons, and there was a political incentive to slaughter all the bison to get rid of the Native Americans' food source. The same incentives to rid the plains of bison in the 1800s simply don't exist today. I've no doubt that ranching bison isn't the same as or as easy as ranching cattle -- but if my local Costco is any indication, their product line for bison seems to be expanding.
I believe a more grass-fed system could be consumer-driven if corn subsidies were eliminated. Of course, it's another question as to whether beef consumption, grass-fed or not, will increase based on the decline in red meat consumption over the past 30-40 years. But the other question is : is this even possible, environmentally speaking? Can we actually produce as many cattle or bison in America on a grass-fed model? I believe it is possible but it would appear to require more land:
Cattle industry statistics [U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2008] show that, in 2007, the United States used 2 billion bushels of corn to produce 22.16 billion lb finished grain-fed beef (17.3 million head steers and 10.2 million head heifers at average dressed weights of 830.2 and 764.8 lb, respectively). At 150 bushels/acre corn, this means we used 13.3 million acres to produce the feed grains. Converting all beef production to grass-based finishing would require at least an additional 26.6 million acres of pasture/grass to produce 2007 U.S. beef output.
I agree that grass-fed beef takes more land than grain-fed beef, but I think there's something fishy about these numbers. I really believe we'd only need twice as much land to finish, at most. In other words, an additional 13.3 million acres, not an additional 26.6 million. Stay with me... If we have 27.5 million head of cattle being slaughtered for grain-fed beef yearly, finished on grains from 13.3 million acres, and we estimate that 1 acre of grass per head is needed for pastured, grass-fed techniques instead of the approximately 0.5 acres per head needed for grain finishing, we only come up with a total of 27.5 million acres total needed for 27.5 million head.
In any case, it would take twice as much land to finish these cattle grass-fed, but since most cattle are not raised their entire life in a feedlot (only the last year or so), I don't actually believe the total amount of land to raise all cattle on grass for their entire lives would actually raise significantly. In fact, since we have around 100 million head of cattle in the United States, assuming only 27 million or so are being finished on grain at any given time, that means about 73 million head are on pasture -- and that already requires roughly 73 million acres. So, we'd be looking at a total of 100 million acres for grass raising and finishing as opposed to approximately 86 million acres for grass raising and grain finishing. That's not really a very significant difference in land volume. The reason it's such a profitable system is because of corn subsidies and because corn fattens cows more quickly. (If these numbers look funny or you have further comments, please let me know, but I think I have it about right.)
This is especially interesting in consideration of where our corn is going. About 35% of it is used for ethanol (some of the byproduct is then used for cattle feed). About 55% is used for cattle feed. And only 5% of it is used for producing high fructose corn syrup.
Wow.
So, in other words, if we dumped corn subsidies altogether, and corn-based ethanol were to go by the wayside because it is economically unsustainable on its own, it would free up a whole lot of land for pasture right there. Wishful thinking, I know! And incidentally, the problems of increased cost of corn faced by those raising animals has recently been discussed here. I'm not prepared to say what corn should cost, but I certainly think it would be more expensive without subsidies in any case.
Now consider how many bison roamed in North America, in their original range from the western plains to as far east as Ohio and Georgia, before they were eliminated by government policies. Estimates are between 50-100 million ... and bison weigh somewhat more than cows.
I'm not sure we'll ever see significant numbers of bison on former corn- and soy-fields in the United States in our lifetime, or even cattle for that matter. But it's food for thought.Labels: Bison, Buffalo, Grass-fed, Pastured
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