Posted on 10/09/2015 7:42:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
This week, the Obama administration did something uncharacteristically sensible: It declined to urge Americans to eat less meat.
Despite the recommendation of a top nutrition advisory panel to use federal agencies to set new dietary guidelines involving fewer cheeseburgers, barbecued ribs and filet mignon -- all in an effort to merely save the planet -- administration officials quietly announced that such new guidelines are not "the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability."
Liberal supporters of kudzu climate change legislation were furious that the president wouldn't take the advice of Scientists-with-a-capital-S -- who are to the left the only moral authorities that matter -- and use his considerable bully pulpit to cut the bull, literally.
"A meat-eater's typical diet ... is responsible for almost twice as much global warming as your typical vegetarian's and almost triple that of a vegan," Josh Voorhees lamented at Slate after the news broke. "(An) Oxford University study suggested that cutting your meat intake in half could cut your carbon footprint by more than 35 percent."
All of this may be true. But there are more than a few reasons why Americans will not -- and should not -- stop eating meat.
The first is that it will most certainly not save the planet. To have any meaningful impact on the global climate, a meat abstinence campaign would require worldwide cooperation and compliance. Try telling Brazil, the world's largest exporter of beef and the second largest beef producer, to slow its roll, especially in light of its struggling economy. Also, cows have other intrinsic values than meat, such as milk (and sacrality, if you're one of the world's billion Hindus), that will likely assure their longtime survival.
Another reason the scheme won't work is that humans prefer to eat meat. Evolutionarily and biologically -- also Science-with-a-capital-S -- we are meat eaters. It's why we have digestive tracts specifically designed to process meat. It's why our enzymes evolved to digest meat. It's why with greater meat consumption we became more intelligent and social than other species. Denying ourselves meat would, both in the short term and over centuries, have a disastrous effect on human development. Ex-vegan Lierre Keith, author of the controversially militant anti-veganism book "The Vegetarian Myth," says: "A vegetarian diet -- and especially a vegan diet -- does not provide for the long-term maintenance and repair of the human body. So vegetarians are on drawdown of their biological reserves."
But meat hasn't just fed our bodies. It's fed human civilization's soul. Vaclav Smil's book "Should We Eat Meat?" connects meat and "cooperative hunting" to the "development of language and socialization." The domestication of animals was a significant factor in evolving from Old World societies to modern ones. When a Third World country graduates to a developing nation, one of the first thing it does is supply its citizens with more protein-rich meat.
But even if we did collectively decide to turn to a vegetarian or meat-light economy, if you like your vegetables you'd better be prepared for more hunting.
Hunting and animal population control is why you have readily available produce at your favorite grocery store. Agricultural producers experience 10 percent crop loss in wildlife damage from deer and other wildlife species annually, according to aUniversity of Nebraska study. State governments regularly use taxpayer dollars to compensate farmers for their losses. If we're going to feed our nation with veggie burgers, get ready for a deer explosion -- and the car accidents that will accompany it.
While the Obama administration made a political decision not to upset the influential livestock and agriculture industries when it ignored experts' orders to lower meat consumption, it was also the right one. And as we're learning, the government has a pretty lamentable record when it comes to telling us what we should and shouldn't eat.
After long recommending that we avoid whole milk -- it was in fact banned from school lunch programs -- many nutritionists now say the opposite might be healthier, that consuming fat can lower incidence of heart disease.
As climate change adherents insist on the science that supports their cause and ignore the science that does not, while foisting selective, incomplete or flat-out wrong prescriptions upon average Americans who must continually adapt to new behavioral mandates, this week's decision was a win for meat lovers everywhere. As if eating meat wasn't already winning.
To quote John Stossel: A government that can control what you eat can control who you have sex with.
And the ultimate intrusion is being told no, you can’t eat that.
Less meat?!
Horrors!
Where would Mooch be without her fried chicken?
It wasn’t Obama.
These same geniuses are now in control of the nation’s healthcare.
With hamburger at $7 a pound red meat consumption is down.
The question is why red meat is that expensive compared to chicken and pork.
Meat = Climate Change * headsmack *
Buy a good Paleo diet book in a store or on Kindle to read about the dangers of the insane veggie diet on our bodies.
Dentists look at the teeth of a new patient and can tell if they are vegan whackos or a balanced diet eater.
On the other hand, Obama is mandating an increase in the amounts of Halal meats for everyone!
If god didn’t want us to eat animals,
why did he make them out of meat?
This morning a man told me his wife is a school principal and was told they can serve hot dogs and chili together for lunch because that would be two meats and two meats at one meal are not allowed by the government. This government is out of control! I would love to know who makes such asinine decisions for us. It can’t be just the ruler’s wife.
So that Oxford study says cutting meat intake by 50% reduces one’s carbon footprint by 35%.
Extrapolated that means going Vegan cuts ones carbon footprint by 70%.
I think we have a new way to challenge Progs on climate change: until they personally pony up by going vegan, they have no cred on the matter.
WTF is a “policy conversation”?
PETA:
People Eating Tasty Animals
Apparently, even the Obammunists could figure out that if their primary criteria for healthy diet recommendations was unrelated to, and diametrically opposed to, actual human health, the credibility of their dietary recommendations would instantly drop from not very credible anyway to below zero. Not to mention the massive outcry from bazillions of ACTUAL dietary experts would be both deafening and damaging.
Plus, the Obammunists probably realized that such ludicrous recommendations supposedly grounded in “science” would leech over to damage the already shrinking credibility of other claims by the Obammunists which are supposedly grounded in “science”, such as so-called “global warming”.
Basically, even the Obammunists realized basing dietary recommendations on the theory of global warming was a bridge too far.
And remember, if meat was outlawed, only outlaws would have meat.
Hog and chicken production can respond to market conditions in a three or so months. Cattle production takes about two years to respond.
Supply. The beef herd is at a multi-decade low right now. It’s horrifically expensive to be a beef cattle rancher. Most of the big ranches have shut down because the money just isn’t there. These days, most individual ranch herds are 30-50 cattle, and those ranchers are just barely scraping by as well.
On top of that, the supply low-spot caused by that big storm kill a couple of years ago, and a herd cull that happened at the same time, are now impacting the end-consumer part of the market. Herd numbers are starting to climb again, finally, but I’ve got expert assurance that it will never reach the numbers it did 10 years ago.
On a more general note, I’ve come to the mostly-unscientific conclusion that humans are obligate omnivores. All the greenies make a big deal about us being omnivores, and then use that to justify their all-veg diet, saying that since we can get away with eating anything, we are fine just eating vegetables. However, as others have pointed out, without meat we couldn’t have become what we are now. I say that we *have* to eat at least some meat, just as we *have* to eat at least some plant-based and animal-sourced (cheese, milk, eggs) foods.
Big deal...Michelle has already taken any decent meat out of our childrens meals.
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