This is a reprint of my latest article for "
Planet Kansas" --the Kansas Sierra Club magazine. I've been fortunate enough to be able to write the "Eating as Thought the Earth Matters" column for several issues.
The “Question Authority”
Diet
One
of my favorite bumper stickers is the one that simply states “Question Authority.” Participating in any justice movement
requires that of us. It is by
questioning, rather than accepting, authority that we measure the rules,
traditions, customs, and laws against our own ethics and our own moral
compass.
In a New York
Times article entitled, “Retracting a Plug for Meatless Mondays,” Amy Harmon
described the debacle at the USDA when someone recommended in an interoffice
newsletter the following: “One simple way to reduce your
environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the ‘Meatless Monday’
initiative.” They went on to explain the benefits: “The
production of meat, especially beef (and dairy as well), has a large
environmental impact. According to the U.N., animal agriculture is a major
source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also
wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef.”
The Meatless Monday campaign
is promoted by numerous organizations, including the John Hopkins School of
Public Health. Its goal is to encourage
people to go meatless on Mondays to benefit one’s own health, the environment,
and the animals.
Cries of heresy rang out
from those who profit hugely from the animal agriculture industry. It did not
take long for the authorities to, not only remove the recommendation, but also
to state quite authoritatively: “U.S.D.A. does not endorse Meatless Monday.”
Meanwhile, we go on questioning, and we find that an October, 2012,
United Nations Global Environment Alert Service article (at unep.net) reported
that: “…the true costs of industrial agriculture, and specifically ‘cheap
meat’, have become more and more evident. Today, ‘the livestock sector emerges
as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most
serious environmental problems’" (Steinfeld et al. 2006).” Among the stressors to the earth caused by
animal agriculture, they list many of the problems we have highlighted in this
column—desertification, deforestation, pollution, overuse of water, using grain
to feed animals instead of hungry people, and greenhouse gas emissions.
As we question further, we hear from The Center for Biological
Diversity. They report that scientists
are asking legislators to reduce public land grazing in the west. They cite higher temperatures, accompanied
by less snow and water, and more fires.
The combination of global warming and the huge stress placed on these
lands by domestic animals is causing a situation in which it is becoming more
and more difficult for the ecosystems to recover and support the wild animals
who depend on them. They noted that both
BLM and Forest Service land is trampled upon by grazers causing erosion and
harming water, wildlife, plant biodiversity, and pollination.
As the Question Authority journey continues, a Norwegian
foundation known as GRID-Arendal has posted revealing information on their
website at grida.no. They are a group
that collaborates with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Regarding fish, GRID notes that out of 110-130 million tons of marine animals,
30 million tons are discarded as trash and 30 million tons are converted to
fishmeal much of which is ironically fed to vegetarian animals such as
cows. What will the “authorities” think
of next?
We all know that today’s fishing technologies, aquaculture of
captive fish, and land animal agriculture pollution are major causes of dead
zones and other severe threats to the health of the earth’s waters.
GRID also points out that the land needed to pasture and grow
crops to feed animals takes up
approximately one-third of all arable land, land that could be used to feed
people, including the nearly one billion of the world’s hungry human
beings. Imagine, as the global
population increases, if the demand for meat increases along with it, as meat
producers hope it will, sustainable meat production will be more of an oxymoron
than it is now. Already, approximately
70% of what was Amazon forest has been slashed and burned and is used for
pasture and animal feed crops.
It
is precisely because we question authority that the giant animal agriculture
machine has proposed “ag-gag” bills in 11 states. These bills are designed to make it a crime
to film, document, or otherwise expose activities at agricultural facilities.
Whistleblowers around the country have been able to expose animal cruelty,
unsafe food practices, and illegal and unfair treatment of workers, but big ag
wants that to stop no matter that both human and animal rights are at
stake.
In
a May 27 press release entitled “North
Carolinians to See TV Ads Showing Animal Cruelty the Chamber of Commerce is
Trying to Keep Hidden,” the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) states “The
narrator in The HSUS commercial calls on politicians and the North Carolina
Chamber of Commerce to stop the legislation because it would criminalize undercover
investigations, help protect and shield the abusers and violate the First
Amendment rights of freedom of speech and the press.”
The importance of whistleblowers and authority
questioners cannot be underestimated.
HSUS reports: “A 2008 whistleblower investigation into a
slaughter plant in California revealed sick animals being slaughtered, leading
to the recall of 140 million pounds of tainted meat, tens of millions of pounds
of which was originally destined for school cafeterias across America. Images
of workers kicking cows, ramming them with a forklift and using electric prods
and high-pressure water hoses to force sick animals to slaughter led evening
newscasts and shocked consumers. This one investigation led to cruelty
convictions, Congressional hearings, new policy, a shut-down of the plant and
the largest meat recall in U.S. history.”
It may not
always be the most popular path to take, but without questioners and whistleblowers,
this earth and all who live here will continue to suffer under the heels of the
toxic industries that profit from exploiting and killing animals, people, and
nature.
Refusing to
support these industries by eating a vegan, plant-based diet and living
nonviolently is one of the most radical, revolutionary acts anyone can
take. Questioning authority leads to
researching the origins of the products we buy.
If the source of that product is steeped in violence, we can refuse to
support it. Therein lies our power to bring peace and healing to the world.
Copyright 2013 Judy Carman
May this new year of 2014 bring the world closer than it has ever been to peace and freedom for all beings. 
