Comfortably Unaware (11 page)

Over the past forty years, certain individuals have enlightened themselves by researching the general topic of the detrimental
effects of eating animals and have essentially arrived at similar findings—that our demand for consumption of animals for food is not healthy or sustainable. Most of them have arrived at this conclusion by close examination of one aspect of the problem, either human health, pollution, land use, crop and feed use, water supply, animal rights, or something similar. For instance, thirty years before the American Dietetic Association even acknowledged the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, Nathan Pritikin and others wrote about epidemiologic studies that exposed the clear relationship between eating animals and the development of numerous Western diseases. Twenty-five years before the United Nations published a paper regarding our current unsustainable use of livestock, many researchers and authors, such as Jeremy Rifkin in his book
Beyond Beef
, explained the many problems that the cattle industry has caused. These individuals did not tread so lightly.

So if this information has been available, why haven't you heard about it? And why isn't anything being done now to move people in the right direction of choosing foods that will not kill us or our planet? The reason lies on three levels:

1.  Individuals who know this information are not given an adequate platform to get the message out. Essentially, the information never goes anywhere.

2.  There is a disparity and absence of knowledge with highly visible individuals who have been afforded speaking platforms and otherwise have the ability to inform and influence the public. Here, the information could certainly be disseminated, but these public speakers, celebrities,
or “experts” are unaware and do not have all the correct information about food choices. The public is essentially influenced by inadequate or incomplete data and misinterpretation provided for them.

3.  People who are aware and are in various positions to get the message out so that it could make a difference do not speak about it. (These individuals are usually in the media, such as news commentators, prominent actors, or talk show hosts.) Why? They may be afraid of the potential repercussions in providing information that is controversial and which might be difficult for our culture to accept. These individuals also may be policy-makers, such as legislators, who come across this information somewhere but would feel uncomfortable taking the appropriate action. Although it would save millions of lives, reduce health-care costs, and save our planet, and even though they really may want to inform the masses and make a change, they realize it might be a bad move for their job security—numerous powerful businesses and industries would have difficulty with this knowledge becoming commonplace.

Nowhere is the “tread lightly” concept more evident than with Oprah Winfrey. On April 16, 1996, Oprah allowed a discussion on her show that divulged accurate accounts of unsafe feeding of livestock and subsequent disease outbreaks, as well as eventual illnesses and deaths of consumers. When Oprah declared she would “stop eating hamburgers because of fear of mad cow disease,” the powerful National Cattlemen's Beef Association
(NCBA) retaliated by taking her to court. This caused difficulty for her, as she had to move her show to Texas while she was caught in the defense of her case. Since then, there has been no discussion of any topic that could even remotely be considered negative regarding the meat and/or dairy industry. She now says only what is politically appropriate for continued viewer support.

It is interesting to note that this topic of contracting food-borne illness from eating beef, which created such a furor to the NCBA, was simply one of many topics that could have and should have been discussed to enlighten the public. There is so much more room for talk show hosts to allow elucidation on the negative impact our demand to eat animals has on the environment, our health, health-care costs, or a variety of other related subjects. I consider it fortunate for the NCBA that Oprah exposed to her audience only one small fraction of the multitude of serious problems for which the meat industry is directly responsible.

A classic example of misuse of a media platform with regard to eating meat was seen on
The O'Reilly Factor
, hosted by Bill O'Reilly. On Thursday, January 29, 2009, O'Reilly had an ideal opportunity to educate his audience to a better understanding of the negative aspects of eating meat during the segment titled “Is Meat a Good Idea?” Rather than doing his homework on the subject, however, and choosing appropriate guests and allowing obviously important but previously suppressed issues to be discussed intelligently, Mr. O'Reilly allowed continued misperceptions on the topic to grow. Somehow, the segment “Is Meat a Good Idea?” was turned into a unilateral and scientifically unsupported discussion about erectile dysfunction. This had almost nothing to do with the topic title. Then, equally off target, the discussion turned to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals), and ended with O'Reilly stating, “I eat meat and resent being told by PETA that I'm some kind of savage for doing it.” In actuality, Mr. O'Reilly may not be a “savage,” but he is quite uninformed and in a state of denial regarding his continued unhealthy choice of foods and the misuse of the informational platform he commands. This could have been a wonderful opportunity to reveal facts to the viewing audience and to increase their understanding of the ill effects of eating meat on their own health and that of our planet.

In
An Inconvenient Truth
, Al Gore enlightens readers with information on global warming and suggestions for lessening our carbon footprint. This was a wonderful thing, and it earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. As you now know, however, Gore discussed only part of the story. The much larger story is that of the livestock industry's role in producing more global warming than all our cars, trucks, planes, and other vehicles used in transportation combined. What is interesting to me is that Gore epitomizes the “tread lightly” issue, as he was quite aware of this information. He chose to seek the path of least resistance, the path to tell essentially the convenient truth and mention, in an obscure area at the back of his book, that we should “modify [our] diet to include less meat.”

His
An Inconvenient Truth
is filled with examples of how the earth is changing as a result of global warming, but it does not provide a connection for the reader to the real culprit. He addresses the theme of logging, stating, “The way we treat forests is a political issue.” He fails to mention, however, that the
reason
for deforestation, or “logging,” is because what we choose to eat accounts for over 70 percent of all forest lost in the Amazon region. He had ample opportunity to provide readers with accurate
reasons, but he chose to call it “logging.”

I can only speculate on the real reason for Al Gore's nondisclosure, which I suspect are his own ties to the current livestock industry. He owns a farm and has cultural and perhaps political affiliations with that industry, and it would be a controversial and risky move for him to give too much attention to the adverse affects of that industry. I appreciate his efforts and accomplishments with one aspect of awareness to global warming, but he did not appropriately use the public platform he was provided to present the correct message, one that would be the most effective to promote change for a healthier planet.

As we saw earlier, the Kyoto Protocol was agreed in December 1997, although it finally took effect on February 16, 2005. While all countries that joined under the Convention are “encouraged” to stabilize their greenhouse gas emissions, certain nations who are signatories to the Protocol are legally committed to an average reduction of 5 percent of 1990 emission levels. These reductions must occur between 2008 and 2012. As of late 2009, 187 parties had ratified the Protocol, but there was no replacement framework to follow from the year 2012. Because of this, a fifteenth session was held in December 2009, the Copenhagen Accord, with the intent to create a framework as a follow-up of the Kyoto Protocol to “define methods of reducing emissions and how to offset what we cannot” (UNFCCC, 2010). Results were that “pledges were communicated by 75 parties to cut or limit emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020.” Pledges are a step—although clearly a baby step. Because again, nowhere in the reports of the UNFCCC is there specific wording that addresses the fact that the livestock industry is a major cause of global warming, that it is driven by our demand to eat animals, and that strategies,
therefore, need to be developed to reduce and eventually eliminate this factor.

I know of one solution that perfectly fits both categories of strategies; that is, how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and how to create offsets: simply stop raising livestock. This is, of course, a large step, but it is the right step. And doing so would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time, major offsets would be created by the concomitant restoration of forests and other terrestrial, as well as oceanic natural habitats.

Mark Bittman's book
Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating
, also had the opportunity to provide enlightening information and dietary solutions related to meat and its large carbon imprint. Instead, Bittman used it as a twist to sell another book. Although on the back cover, he uses phrases such as “help stop global warming” and “requires no sacrifice,” he still advocates eating meat and animal products throughout his book—warm bacon dressing, squid or shrimp, turkey thighs, pork or lamb shoulder, beef chuck, Italian sausage, bone-in pork chop, comfit duck legs, and the dish he “craves all the time … Thai beef salad with flank steak.” How does eating these foods help to stop global warming? How does eating these foods “reduce your risk of chronic disease” and require “no sacrifice,” as he emphasizes in bold red letters on the back cover of his best-selling book? In fact, eating the foods he advocates has exactly the opposite effect. Those foods increase your risk of many chronic disease states, increase global warming, add greatly to global depletion, and certainly require a heavy sacrifice of resources used, as well as the animal itself that you are eating.

Mr. Bittman's book can be more easily accepted by the
public and likely will put him on television and radio shows, and provide exposure for marketing purposes. The result of his not addressing the true facts, however, is that his book directly implies that it is okay to continue eating meat; that it's okay to continue choosing foods that cause significant global depletion and health risks to ourselves. Clearly, it is not okay at all. Individuals such as Mr. Bittman, who are provided with a platform, should provide the correct information or give the platform to someone who is more capable and concerned about creating proper direction.

The most profound example of the politics of food systems and corporate influence on you can be found in
Food Politics
, a book in which author Marion Nestle divulges the vast grip the meat and dairy industry has on the U.S. public and the way in which they limit and affect our food choices. In 1986, Dr. Nestle moved to Washington DC to work for the U.S. Public Health Service, where she managed the editorial production of the first government-directed book about diet and health in America, the seven-hundred-page
The Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health
. It can be explained no better than in her introduction: “My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend ‘eat less meat' … or the report will never be published.” Research, in fact, did undeniably indicate that meat and dairy products were linked to various disease states and that eating animal products of any kind—but particularly meat and dairy—would substantially increase our risk of heart and cardiovascular disease, hypertension, gall and kidney stone development, and some cancers. Instead of being able to report these findings and provide appropriate suggestions to the public in a straightforward manner, Dr. Nestle was coerced into incorporating them in a suppressed
fashion that would not be so detrimental to the powerful livestock industry. Specifically, instead of stating the facts of these findings and that consumption of meat and dairy should be substantially limited or eliminated from the diet, the book uses wording such as “choose a diet low in …” or “have two or three servings of meat.” This effectively allowed the meat and dairy industry to continue the cultural brainwashing of the American public through misleading and misinforming marketing.

The case against consuming livestock could not be more obvious than in the 2006 LEAD report by Steinfeld et al, and yet there is a blatant display of treading lightly revealed by the conclusions. The Livestock, Environment, and Development (LEAD) initiative was formed to “address the environmental consequences of livestock production, particularly in light of the rising demand for food products of animal origin and the increasing pressure on natural resources.” The LEAD initiative was supported by the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and numerous other international organizations. As stated in their executive summary: “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” Findings suggest there should be major policy focus dealing with livestock problems “of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.” Knowing now that livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on such an enormous scale, they further conclude: “The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency.” The solution does seem pretty obvious: stop eating meat. However, instead of simply advising lessening the demand for livestock by reducing the consumption of animals
and animal products, the LEAD authors provide suggestions such as “relocating factory farms away from urban areas,” “finding feed that results in less methane in the animals' flatulence,” and others that essentially perpetuate the problem, both conceptually and functionally. These authors, who spent so much time and energy uncovering the fact that essentially all aspects of the livestock industry are devastating to our planet, summarize by saying that even though we are losing our planet on many levels due to livestock, let's keep raising them and eating them—it's okay to do this as long as we find ways to make the devastation less profound.