Author: Sarah Flocken
I enjoy bacon. I really like In-N-Out. I adore my mom’s turkey lasagne. I also love living animals, care about my health and am genuinely concerned for the future of planet Earth. Dear readers, before you roll your eyes and move on to the Campus Safety reports, let me clarify that this is not a cliché condemnation of the carnivorous. I am not some bleeding heart, tofu-chomping hippie who thinks that anybody who disagrees with my own granola-liberal views is wrong. I am, in fact, a recovering carnivore, one who grudgingly acknowledges the serious impact the food industry, especially the meat production industry, has on our very sick planet Earth.
Considering the meat-inclusive diet’s health risks, ethical implications and effect on the planet, I don’t think it’s too extreme to suggest that America, or at least Occidental students, adopt a more widespread vegetarianism.
When it comes to health, the risks of eating commercially produced meat outweigh any of its possible benefits. Last month, the office of the USDA Inspector General released a report on the implementation of the National Residue program, which seeks to curb harmful chemical residues in commercially produced meat products.
According to this report, in addition to salmonella and E. coli – disease-inducing bacteria that are normally associated with meat – drug, pesticide and heavy metal residues are often found in large quantities in commercially processed meat, despite governmental efforts to reduce them. Even scarier: The USDA report fully admits that “in some cases, heat may actually break residues down into components that are more harmful to consumers.” This means that when you cook your steak, you might as well be ingesting pesticide-sprayed fruits or swallowing drugs or metals themselves. Ew. That is hard evidence against commercially produced meat’s possible touted benefits of protein, iron and other essential minerals and nutrients. More food for thought: It is nearly impossible, even in the Occidental College environment, to avoid commercially processed meat.
In the meat industry, the cattle industry especially, it’s important to remember that in order to stay in business, these commercial farms and slaughterhouses have to cut corners. This corner-cutting in order to deliver cheaper meat products results in particularly brutal conditions for the animals being raised and slaughtered.
In case you’ve already forgotten about the ease with which this meat is contaminated, a 2002 investigation by New York Times Magazine writer Michael Pollan confirmed that most commercially farmed animals spend their lives crowded together, “living in their own excrement,” and enter the slaughterhouses “caked with the stuff.” Even grosser: Once they enter the slaughterhouses, most of these animals are still alive when slaughtered. The most common slaughtering method involves shocking or stunning the animal, then hanging them up by their legs and subsequently slitting their throats, gutting and skinning them. Bushway Packing, Inc., a slaughterhouse in Fresno, has very recently come under legal fire after an undercover video surfaced of veal calves in their plant being skinned alive, according to a March 2010 Los Angeles Times blog article. That’s right – this kind of cruelty is still happening and is likely more widespread than Americans would
What took me so long, then, as a self-proclaimed animal lover and devotee to my personal health, to accept the idea of vegetarianism as a near-necessity? Until recently, I did not consider the environmental impacts of the meat-dependent culture in which I live. A recent New York Times article cited a 2007 study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan, which stated that “2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.”
More recently, a 2009 World Bank scientist’s study correlates this data, estimating that the meat production industry accounts for at least 51 percent of greenhouse gas output, linking meat consumption, energy and carbon output in such a way that effectively ruins the planet. Thus, eliminating meat from one’s diet might have the same effect as turning off the lights and driving less.
In short, giving up meat may be hard to do, but it’s more necessary for Americans than we think. Our health and environment are at stake, and we, as a developed country, have the resources to adopt a more earth-friendly diet. While it may be a struggle to accept tofu and soy wholeheartedly into my life, I’m trying, for the sake of my buddy planet Earth. If not for the ethical and health concerns, Americans needs to phase out meat in order to help our environment.
Sarah Flocken is a senior ECLS major. She can be reached at sflocken@oxy.edu.
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