In A Defense of Meat Goes Too Far on the pages of the online version of The Atlantic, Helene York takes Nicolette Hahn Niman to task about her NYT Op-Ed The Carnivore’s Dilemma, specifically some of her claims in favor of pasture-based meat production, and in the process Ms. York offers little substantive support and opens a can of worms that lends even more weight to Ms. Niman’s general argument.
Ms. York takes her time to enumerate points of potential agreement with Ms. Niman, over the ‘cornburger’ versus ‘grassburger’ debate - pasture based versus industrial feedlot based livestock. However, she frames her disagreement with respect to the ‘price’ of a cornburger versus that of a grassburger, and in the process she expands the discussion, and rightly so, beyond just the cost of global warming to also include the costs imposed on our land, our water and our collective health all caused by industrial livestock and meat production that would be far less, if they are incurred at all, in pasture-based production.
In her third paragraph when asserting that Ms. Niman has gone “too far,” Ms. York writes “The halo of the small ranch is not entirely deserved. Nor is it within reach of most Americans--financially or practically.” She also concludes her piece with further hyperbole “Pasture-based local meat is radically more expensive than industrially produced meat.” (Of course, this will leave many a reader with the impression that pasture-based farming is either uneconomical, an intentional rip-off, or elitist.) I assume that for the basis of her argument Ms. York simplifies things for the reader by comparing the price of a piece of beef in a supermarket or big box store with that of a specialty market or artisan butcher shop, which on its face is more egregious than comparing an apple to a floor mop.
While Ms. York points the finger at Federal Policy, she makes no attempt to elaborate specific policies and how they impact the cost of a grassburger or a cornburger. As have been enumerated by many authors over the last decade or so, there are both the massive direct costs and indirect costs (beyond those of global warming) we pay as taxpayers, which have made the price of industrial meat so low that as a society we’ve become addicted to the “$1 meal menu” and the “all you can eat prime rib buffet.”
Massive subsidies for growing corn and soy keep the primary components of cattle feed artificially low thus driving down the price of beef. Additionally, all of the changes wrought by the industrializion of our food supply, in both feed production and meat production, have created massive amounts of environmental and health costs that Big Ag has successfully lobbied for the American people to shoulder one way or another. Excessive runoff of nitrogen based fertilizers and animal waste from feedlot operations have destroyed the water quality of aquifers, rivers, and inlets throughout the country - impacts not typically created by small, pasture-based farming. The practices of industrial feedlot production have also put our entire food system at risk from diseases like Salmonella and E Coli and weakened our first line of defense by over use of antibiotics. None of these costs are reflected in the meat counter price of industrial beef, and this is unfortunate since it's in the production of industrial beef that the overwhelming majority of these cost are incurred.
If the true cost of all of this cheap beef were really known - Big Ag does its best not only to keep it out of the public’s view, but also spends a lot of money on commercials that inform us of all the ‘wonderful’ things they do to make food better - then industrial beef would be a lot more expensive, and everyone would be eating a lot less.
Post Script:When responding to a NYT's Op-Ed piece that cites 15 different organizations and periodicals as support, I think that Ms.York would do well to consider a little more authoritative groundwork to support her own position rather than just phrases like: "Research from numerous on-farm studies" and "Canadian food systems researcher Nathan Pelletier told a distinguished audience..."!!!
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