As an event in Hollywood, I was hoping that the conference would highlight the issue of animal agriculture’s contribution to global warming. I’m thankful for your honest coverage of the conference, including the important question of environmental and policy strategy.

I’m by no means a vegan, but I am a vegetarian. One of the main reasons for my choice is the inefficiency involved in converting feed to meat in industrial meat production systems. I cannot personally justify converting 16 pounds of grain into one pound of beef [1]. Nor can I justify emissions of about 36 pounds of CO2 equivalent for a pound of beef [2], especially relative to 0.68 pounds CO2 equivalent for the production of a pound of dried peas [3]. Other meats are more efficient than beef generally, but much less so than vegetable protein.

But the way in which animals are raised makes a large difference relative to environmental impact. In terms of sustainable meat production, one of the most impressive things going on is a movement to get back to how humans used to use animals. We used to raise animals in order to convert energy and nutrients that were not readily available to humans – e.g., grazing them on low productivity land that could not be farmed, or feeding them near-rotting food or not easily digestible food by-products. In doing this, humans received meat and also a concentrated form of nutrients (manure) to use on our crops. Humans are smart – this arrangement makes a good deal of sense and has been used by many cultures for millennia. And recently we’ve seen a dramatic increase in this kind of production in the US, such as grass-fed beef based on rotational grazing systems [4]. As part of an overall approach to wise land use decisions for food production, it makes sense to use at least some of the least productive land for grazing [5]. Even with this more sustainable form of meat production, I’d say we in the US still need to greatly reduce our overall meat consumption for both health and environmental reasons, and that only a relatively small amount of meat can be raised in this more sustainable fashion (one reason for its higher price).

The overall point of my presentation was that we need to consider food choices as equally important to our transportation choices in dealing with global warming, both as individuals and as a society that is attempting to tackle the challenge through policy and economic change. Everyone needs to know this, especially those of us in the industrialized world who produce far more than our fair share of global warming gases. One benefit of the conference is that it gave me an opportunity to voice this to an audience larger than an academic conference (including the chance to discuss the issue on this here blog). For that I am thankful. However, I agree with you that vegan elitism and dogma without regard to empirical evidence are not promising ways forward.

References
[1] USDA ERS, cited in Lappé, Frances Moore. 1991. Diet for a small planet. 20th Anniversary ed. New York: Ballantine Books.
[2] Ogino A, Orito H, Shimada K, Hirooka H. 2007. Evaluating environmental impacts of the Japanese beef cow-calf system by the life cycle assessment method. Anim Sci J 78:424–432.
[3] Carlsson-Kanyama, Annika. 1998. Climate change and dietary choices: how can emissions of greenhouse gases from food consumption be reduced? Food Policy 23 (3-4):277-293.
[4] Hassanein, Neva. 1999. Changing the way America farms: Knowledge and community in the sustainable agriculture movement. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
[5] Peters, C. J., J. L. Wilkins, and G. W. Fick. 2007. Testing a complete-diet model for estimating the land resource requirements of food consumption and agricultural carrying capacity: The New York State example. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22 (02):145-153.

It’s my impression that they’ve avoided the topic of animal product production’s effects on the environment and left the vacuum for what you call the “vegan elite,” to define the issue as status quo vs. abstinence.

Bernard Brown
The PB&J Campaign