Meatless Mondays. What a crock!
January 6, 2012
I made a commitment to write a blog more than a year ago. My focus and commitment didn’t last long and the result was a rather extended sabbatical! I felt liked giving it another go for several reasons. Once again, the intent will be to “connect the dots” relating to issues affecting the beef industry, social issues with potentially damaging unintended consequences and marketing. So here we go—again.
The first time I heard someone talking about “Meatless Mondays”, I thought maybe it was some movement to show solidarity for those less fortunate. Maybe it was genuine concern for those who didn’t have a choice about whether or not they could eat on any given day, much less eat meat protein. Was I ever mistaken! Oh no, it is a misguided movement attacking our food production system, specifically the beef industry.
Hardcore Meatless Monday advocates who believe eliminating meat from their diet for a day reduces our carbon footprint and somehow, magically, we are more sustainable, are delusional. They read what they want to read and believe what they want to believe and damned if the facts get in the way! They espouse junk science and follow the mantras of Michael Pollan, a sensationalizing journalist not a scientist, and others less notable but equally as influential to the uninformed.
Now Meatless Monday has morphed into MM for short and become the new and improved health movement. Check out www.meatlessmonday.com and see the A List stars and entertainers buying into the schitk. According to the website, a survey conducted by the Internet reservation service, Open Table, found that 69% of those responding reported they go Meatless Monday. Another 9% say they observe MM on occasion. The website also says, “Hundreds of chefs around the country use the campaign to raise health, boost sustainability and create compelling dishes.”
I beg to disagree. I’m betting a big, fat steak, (I prefer filet mignon—rare), hundreds of chefs use the campaign as a marketing ploy to sell higher priced, higher margin menu items to a misinformed demographic quite willing to pay for it. In fact, possibly the most telling chef to “sign on” is the famous contemporary king of all foods Italian, Mario Batali. What an oxymoron that Batali, whose made a fortune building a restaurant empire on the back of an unlimited supply of premium meats now takes a position encouraging his patrons to NOT EAT MEAT! With restaurants named Bar Jamon, Carnevino Italian Steakhouse or Manzo, billed as “a formal dining experience that celebrates meat from the U.S.” do I seriously believe he doesn’t want his patrons to eat meat? Not for a minute!
The Journal of Animal Science recently published, “The Environmental Impact of Beef Production in the United States: 1977 compared with 2007”. Jude Capper, Ph.D., Washington State University animal scientist, conducted the research comprehensively examining the beef industry’s carbon footprint. I find the research fascinating as a layman.
Then I watch the evening news. What’s even more fascinating, and potentially frightening to me is how quickly a perfect storm can build that combines ideology and ignorance. Special interest groups, smelling blood in the water, cherry pick provocative issues such as carbon footprint that make world news almost on a daily basis. Obviously, niche marketers and even restaurateurs have taken advantage of an opportunity to superficially “by in” and promote an unfounded, misguided concept. These days, we seem to have a difficult time distinguishing between social lifestyle choices and misguided ideology.
The beef industry is fortunate to have bright minds like Jude Capper. Jude not only conducted the research, she’s traveling countless thousands of miles getting in front of audiences to present her findings. One of Jude’s research conclusions refutes the claims of Meatless Monday. The claims are, in fact, baseless. As Capper rather humorously presents to her audience, “Even if we all went meatless every Monday, if we only ate lentils and tofu and magically didn’t give off any methane ourselves, it’s going to cut our national carbon footprint by less than half a percent.” “And then there are important considerations, like where would animal byproducts like leather, tallow and pharmaceuticals come from?”
It’s easy to say these socialized sound bytes bore me, and they do. But, I’m fearful we continue to take for granted consumers outside of our own, sometimes narrow, world view have any appreciation for our efforts to produce safe, sustainable food for the planet. I’m fearful they truly believe they know better than those investing generations of knowledge, experience and amazing science about how to sustain such an incredibly complex food system.
Jude Capper’s research is science we desperately need and need to understand. And now, we need to be aggressive and strategic about how we use it.
This article doesn’t provide any scientific information, nor did it address valid reasons why people choose to eat less meat. The ecological reason for eating less meat is based on the inefficient transfer of energy between trophic levels in a food web (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_pyramid). This basic ecological fact can be extended to human consumption. Basically X amount of crops can feed more humans if the humans are eating the crops directly, rather than adding a tropic level by feeding the crops to a food animal then eating the food animal. Here’s an article from Cornell that explains in more detail: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug97/livestock.hrs.html. I also want to point out that vegetarian options are almost always cheaper than meat options in a restaurant, so the chef conspiracy theory is a little silly.
Jude is good people. Unfortunately, people look for slogans and easy answers these days. Couple that with our growing population of food hysterics and the Google Educated, and you get a lot of misinformation that sinks into a reader’s mind much in the same way as a conspiracy theory. Once they believe the misinformation, any attempt to set them straight will be seen as just another layer of the cover-up. The only thing you can do is arm yourself with facts and sound science, then go agvocate the uninitiated.
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