The Case for Cattle

Cattle have a unique role in agricultural systems, climate mitigation, and food systems. Don't dismiss them based on shallow analysis.

Celebrities, politicians, chefs, and other such environmental “experts” call for restricting or even banning beef consumption, such as in this piece by the inaptly named Marshall Brain ( https://wraltechwire.com/2022/06/03/doomsday-climate-change-and-cattle-the-case-for-banning-beef-worldwide/ ). Epicurious no longer publishes new beef recipes ( https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/why-epicurious-left-beef-behind-article ). New York City mayor Eric Adams pontificates about meat and limits it in institutional menus, like schools, hospitals, and prisons. Why? Why do these authors, AOC, Bill Gates, PETA, and other activists want to get rid of beef? The climate emergency, of course. 

The dubious environmental claims against beef don’t hold up well enough to justify the singular focus on a food with such historic significance across cultures world wide as beef. They say beef has a higher carbon footprint than a vegan diet, but they assume all beef is produced in the same way, ignoring the fact that grass fed beef produces hardly any carbon. They say beef must be banned because it also produces high amounts of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, yet so does rice, and I’m not aware of calls for rice to be banned. They say cows consume feeds that could be fed to humans, but so do pets, and I’ve never once heard a call for pets to be banned. Further, cattle live and prosper on plants inedible to humans, like grass. They say cattle feed consumes agricultural land, yet cows can be raised on land good for growing literally nothing else in the way of food.

They also point to beef substitutes, like plant-based fake meats, ignoring that these are the sort of ultra-refined foods linked to a multitude of human ailments and increased mortality. They also hail the imminent arrival of tissue-culture meats, grown in vats, which have a higher carbon footprint and environmental cost than real meat, plus putting farmers out of a livelihood. 

So why is a shallow analysis sufficient to end a way of life for farmers and ranchers worldwide? Not because of the alleged environmental problems. Because of who produces meat: those very farmers and ranchers. The yeomen and kulaks.