QUESTION AND ANSWER
Q. Don't people need to eat beef in order to stay
healthy?
A. People don't need to eat beef or any other meat in order to stay
healthy. In fact, just the opposite is true. There is abundant evidence which
indicates that people who eat little or no, meat have fewer illnesses and live
longer than large consumers of meat.
People who eat little or no meat should eat a variety of other foods in order
to meet their nutritional needs. However, the health risks of significantly
reducing or eliminating animal- derived products from the diet are miniscule
compared with those associated with overconsumption of beef and other meats.
Those risks include heart disease, cancer and strokes. There has been no mass
exodus to hospital emergency rooms by vegetarians. However, 4,000 Americans
suffer heart attacks every day -- many of them induced by the over-consumption of
saturated fat and cholesterol.
In recent years, a growing number of physicians, athletes, bodybuilders, and
others who are knowledgeable and concerned about health matters have reduced
their consumption of meat or eliminated meat from their diets altogether.
Q. You're asking people to replace much of the beef in their diets with
grains, vegetables, and fruits -- isn't Beyond Beef just a vegetarian campaign
in disguise?
A. The Beyond Beef Campaign is advocating at least a 50 percent cut in
beef consumption in order to reduce human hunger and poverty, environmental
destruction, animal suffering, and damage to human health. Some members of the
Beyond Beef coalition are vegetarians and advocate vegetarianism. Other
coalition members are meat-eaters who see nothing wrong with eating small
amounts of meat which has come from animals who have been humanely and
sustainably raised under strict organic standards.
The beef we eliminate from our diets should not be replaced with another kind
of grain-fed meat because the intensive production and consumption of other
domestic animals also has many destructive effects. Eating high on the flood
chain is costly to the earth and its inhabitants.
If people reduce their beef consumption.
replace at least half of the beef they used to eat with
sustainably and organically raised grains, vegetables, legumes, and fruits, and
refine their eating habits to select only humanely and
sustainably raised beef when they do eat meat, the world and all its inhabitants
will be much better off.
Q. Why does human hunger and malnutrition exist in a world of plenty?
A. There are many reasons why people are hungry; however, the misuse
of agricultural land and the diversion of grain to feed livestock instead of
people are primary causes of hunger in the world today.
Every nation on Earth has the resources -- enough good agricultural land --
to more than adequately feed its people. But much too much of that land is
devoted to the grazing of cattle and other livestock, or to growing feed for
livestock rather than food for people. Nearly half of the world's land is being
used as pasture for cattle and other livestock. In addition, hundreds of
millions of acres of arable land are being used to grow feed for livestock.
Even Ethiopia at the height of its famine in 1984 was using some of its
arricultural land to produce linseed cake, cottonseed cake, and rapeseed meal
for export to feed livestock in Europe.
Currently, one third of the world's grain is fed to livestock. In the United
States, 70 percent of the grain produced is fed to livestock; and two thirds of
all the grain the United States exports to other countries goes to feed
livestock rather than hungry people.
This misappropriation of resources is the direct result of economic policies
and programs adopted by the developing world at the urging of the industrial
nations, multi-national corporations, and international aid-givers.
The United States has encouraged developing countries to climb the protein
ladder in order to provide a market for surplus American grain. At the same
time, developing countries have been encouraged to enter the world commodities
market with livestock feed to pay off their considerable debt to the first
world. Today, production of livestock and livestock feed for the world market is
supplanting the production of staple foods in many developing countries.
In Mexico, for example, where millions of people are chronically
under-nourished, one third of the grain produced is fed to livestock. In Brazil,
where 23 percent of the cultivated land is now being used to grow soybeans --
half of which is destined for export for livestock feed -- less land is
available to grow corn and black beans, staples of the Brazilian peasant diet.
The result has been less food at higher prices for an increasingly hungry and
impoverished population.
Q. You claim that cattle are eating grain and other products such as
soybeans that could feed hungry people. But don't cattle just eat materials that
aren't fit for human consumption?
A. In the United States, the average animal in the feedlot system is
fed about 42 percent forage with the remainder -- about 58 percent -- being
grain.
During the first part of their lives, cattle are set loose on the range to
graze on grasses and other plants inedible by humans. The average cow eats 900
pounds of vegetation a month.
Cattle are then transported to feedlots where they are fattened on grain.
Today, more than 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States -- and
one third of all the grain produced in the world is fed to cattle and other
livestock. If the land used to produce feed grain were used to produce grain for
human consumption, hundreds of millions of people could be fed.
Some cattle are also fed agricultural by-products. such as corn stalks, that
are inedible by humans, as well as manure scrapings from hog and chicken
intensive confinement "factory" farms. Some feedlots have begun experimenting
feeding cattle cement dust, cardboard, paper, and industrial oils and wastes.
Such "foods" do not deprive human beings of nourishment; however, it might be
difficult to work up an appetite for beef raised on organic and industrial
wastes.
Q. Isn't it true that only a tiny fraction of America's beef comes from
the rain forests?
A. While less than 2 percent of all beef consumed in the United States
comes from areas that were formerly Central American rain forests, this beef
compromises most of Central America's beef exports. What is insignificant to the
United States is of tremendous consequence to our southern neighbors.
Historically, the United States has been the largest consumer of Central
American beef, a pattern that continues today. For example, 97 percent of
Guatemala's beef exports go to the United States. Although our imports from the
region as a whole have declined by more than 50 percent since 1975, the United
States still imports considerable quantities of meat from Central America and
southern Mexico. In 199O, those imports totaled about 50,000 tons of beef,
enough to make more than 440 million quarter-pound hamburgers.
Although rain forest beef imports comprise only a fraction of all the beef,
consumed in the United States, the environmental and human toll this "small"
amount takes in Central America is enormous. Americans could easily forego the
beef we import from Central America. Stopping our beef imports from this region,
however, could save the remaining rain forests from further destruction and
could make more land available to peasants for low-impact farming.
Q. Aren't you overstating your claims that cattle contribute to global
warming?
A. We don't think so. Cattle production contributes significantly to
the production of three gases -- carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane --
whose build-up in the atmosphere blocks heat from leaving the earth and thereby
causes global warming.
Large amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere whenever
forests and other biomass are burned to create cattle pasture. In 1987, about
1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere from
clearing and burning the forests of the Amazon, in large part to create pasture
for cattle. In that year alone, deforestation in the Amazon contributed 9
percent of the total worldwide contribution to global warming from all sources.
Additional gases are released by the annual burning of grasslands and
agricultural wastes created by growing livestock feed.
More CO2 is created by our highly mechanized agriculture which
uses up huge amounts of fossil fuels. With 70 percent of all U.S. grain
production now devoted to livestock feed, the energy burned just to produce the
feed represents a significant addition to CO2. It now takes the
equivalent of a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of grain-fed beef in the
United States. To sustain the yearly beef habit of an average family of four
requires the consumption of more than 260 gallons fuel. When that fuel is burned
it releases 2.5 tons of additional carbon dioxide as much CO2 as the
average car emits in six months.
Moreover, producing feed crops for grain-fed cattle requires the use of
petrochemical fertilizers that emit nitrous oxide. In the past forty years, the
use of chemical fertilizers has increased dramatically. Nitrous oxide released
from fertilizer and other sources now accounts for 6 percent of the global
warming effect.
Finally, cattle emit methane, a potent global warming gas, through belching
and fatulation. While methane is also emitted from peat bogs, rice paddies, and
landfills, the increase in the livestock population and the burning of forests
and other biomass accounts for much of the increase in methane emissions over
the past several decades. Methane emissions are responsible for 18 percent of
the global warming trend.
Because a methane molecule traps 25 times as much heat from the sun as a
molecule of CO2 some scientists predict that methane may become the
primary global warming gas in the next fifty years. Already, scientists estimate
that more than 500 million tons of methane may be released into the air each
year. The world's 1.3 billion cattle and other ruminant livestock emit about 60
million tons of the total, or 12 percent of all the methane released into the
atmosphere. The burning of forests, grasslands, and agricultural wastes releases
an additional 50 to 100 million tons of methane.
Q. You claim that cattle frequently withstand rough treatment and even
cruelty. But don't beef producers' have to treat their animals well since they
depend upon them for their livelihood?
A. Certainly it is in the producer's interest to bring healthy, intact
animals to market; but for the most part, cattle producers' concern for animals
begins and ends with profit. The beef industry is big business, and the animals
unfortunate enough to be caught up in it are often treated as commodities, not
as the sensitive living creatures they are. There is often a wide gap between
the minimum care that producers' must provide to their animals in order to turn
a profit and the actual needs of the animals.
Much of the suffering endured by cattle is inflicted simply to make life
easier for ranchers. For example, castration, dehorning, and hot-iron branding
-- all performed without anesthetics do not benefit the animals; they make the
animals easier to control and identify. Cattle and other livestock also often
withstand brutal handling; they are frequently shocked with electric prods,
kicked, beaten, poked, and dragged.
Transportation of cattle and other farm animals is a major animal welfare
problem. Overcrowded trucks, failure to properly water and reed the animals
during long trips, exposure to temperature extremes en route, and rough handling
result in millions of dollars of losses for the meat industry each year.
The industry does try to recoup as much of the loss as possible, however.
"Downers," animals who are so badly injured during transportation they cannot
walk off the trucks, are often chained by the neck or a leg and dragged to the
slaughterhouse floor where they may wait hours in great pain to be butchered.
Animals who arrive at stockyards too sick to be slaughtered are often thrown
onto what is called the "dead pile" and left to die of thirst, starvation, or
freezing temperatures. All these abuses have been documented on videotape and on
film by animal protection organizations.
Financial losses represented by thousands of sick and injured animals are
merely written off by the industry as a cost of doing business. To humanely
euthanize such animals would further cut into industry profits.
Q. If cattle and beef producers' treated their animals badly, wouldn't
they be charged with cruelty under the anti-cruelty laws?
A. There is no federal law to ensure that farm animals have proper
care, suitable living conditions, or protection from abuse and cruelty.
0n the federal level, there are only two laws that pertain to farm animals:
the Humane Slaughter Act and the Twenty-eight Hour Law. The first requires
animals to be stunned before slaughter -- except for kosher and other religious
slaughter. The second, which pertains only to the approximately 5 percent of
animals who are transported by rail and over water, requires that animals be
given rest food, and water if they are in transit more than twenty-eight hours.
The federal Animal Welfare Act specifically exempts from its protections
animals used for food and fiber --- except when such animals are used in
biomedical and other laboratory experiments.
Animals used for food and fiber are also specifically exempted from many
state anti-cruelty laws. In other states, beef industry husbandry and handling
practices that are considered routine -- such as castration without anesthesia,
and even dragging downers to the slaughterhouse floor -- are either implicitly
not covered by anti-cruelty laws or not enforced. Few prosecutors in
cattle-producing states would consider bringing cruelty charges against powerful
cattlemen.
In many states, if a cattle rancher were to treat his dog as he routinely
treats his cattle, he would likely be arrested, tried, fined and/or imprisoned,
and his dog would be confiscated. The uneven application of anti-cruelty laws
reflects the blind eye that society casts toward animals used for food.
Q. How will the Beyond Beef campaign affect the family farm?
A. The family farm has been among the chief victims of the powerful
beef industry lobby; every small farmer in America knows this. For years, the
beef lobby has been able to secure cheap subsidized feed at the expense of
American farmers whose costs of production often exceed the price of feed set by
the government. Small scale ranchers are also exploited by the beef industry
giants who are now able to control and manipulate the price of beef through
various market arrangements.
While Beyond Beef is asking people to cut their beef consumption in half, the
campaign is also encouraging consumers to demand humanely and sustainably raised
beef when they do eat meat. The Beyond Beef campaign will help preserve the
family farm by providing a new market niche for beef that has come from cattle
who are humanely raised under sustainable, organic standards. It is impossible
to raise cattle under such standards in giant corporate feedlots: only the
family farm is capable of filling this new market. Small farmers are encouraged
to make a transition to humane, sustainable husbandry practices to fill this
new and important need.
The Beyond Beef campaign is also advocating a bold new farm policy in the
United States -- one that encourages a transition from feed to food production
by rewarding the nation's small farmers with higher prices for growing food for
human consumption. We believe that it is past time for the government to move
its priorities away from policies and programs that subsidize feed for livestock
and toward programs that subsidize food production for needy human beings, The
Government should greatly expand its aid programs to distribute grain surpluses
to needy people at home and abroad.
Q. What about beef industry workers?
Beef industry workers are among the most exploited inhumanely treated workers
in the United States. Meat-packers, for example, suffer from one of the highest
rates of injury of all occupations. Working conditions are often dehumanizing
and primitive. Employee turnover is as high as 4.7 percent a month at some
plants -- a situation that is often deliberately encouraged in order to
discourage union activity. According to Eleanor Kennelly of the United Food and
Commercial Workers Union, "A meat- packing plant is like nothing you've ever
seen or could imagine. it's like a vision of hell."
The Beyond Beef coalition believes that, given a choice of jobs, most workers
would not choose to do the grisly, miserable, dangerous work of slaughtering and
butchering animals. Beyond Beef supports extended employment compensation and
free education and retraining, for all beef industry workers who lose their jobs
as a result of a reduction in beef consumption. Beyond Reef supports union
efforts to help their members and advocates the setting up of a "superfund" for
all workers who are displaced as a result of enlightened social change and the
enactment of environmental protection and other laws.
Q. How can reducing the amount of beef I eat contribute to solving the
world's problems?
A. Cutting down on the number of hamburgers you eat won't solve all
the world's problems -- but it would be a great start. One of the most effective
thing each of us can do to improve life on the planet is to reduce our
consumption of meat -- especially beef.
Imagine what would happen if every American decided today to cut his or her
beef consumption in half.
First, millions of animal lives would be spared. The average American
currently consumes the meat of seven cows during his or her lifetime. By cutting
our beef consumption in half, each of us would save at least three animals from
being born into a life of suffering and violent death.
Next, our personal health would improve. By reducing beef consumption and
replacing at least half the beef we eat with grains, legumes, vegetables, and
fruits, we would reduce our intake of saturated fat and cholesterol and thereby
reduce the likelihood of developing, and dying from, heart disease, cancer, and
other ailments. We would feel better, live longer, and the nation's health costs
would plummet.
The global environment would also benefit. The beef-production assault would
slow, and the world's forests, soil, water, air, and species would have a
reprieve -- a chance to regenerate themselves.
A 50 percent reduction in beef consumption would also free more agricultural
land that could be used to grow food for hungry people. And cutting U.S. beef
imports in half would help free some lands around the world for use by
indigenous populations to grow their own food.
Many Americans have been looking for a way to make a personal contribution to
the well-being of the planet. Reducing our consumption of beef is an empowering
and powerful act. By changing our diets, we can change the world.
