What is at Stake with American Steak

I originally wrote this piece for my thesis, but I thought I should share it with you too!
Before you read it, however, I would like to point out that there is nothing wrong with eating meat. The problem is that we eat way too much of it.

Since this paper was written for a Massachusetts audience, I would also like to suggest local meat producers from Connecticut. Both the Sunday and Saturday farmers' markets hosted by CitySeed (Edgewood Park and Wooster Square, respectively) have local meat and dairy vendors. You can also check out this CT government link for a full list of meat and dairy farms. Stone Gardens Farms, a poultry producer, is located in Shelton!

So, without further ado, here is the paper.

What is at Stake with American Steak

Americans love meat1. The so-called “all-American” hamburger is the focal point of every barbeque. Bacon and sausage have found their way into the American breakfast, and meat and potatoes have become synonymous with basic or fundamental. In 1950, the average American ate around 144 pounds of meat per year. At first, this seems like quite a bit of meat with the single most consumed meat being pork. However, in just fifty-seven years, chicken has become the single most consumed meat and the overall number of pounds of meat eaten per person per year on average has risen to a startling 222 pounds (Humane Society). As people grow wealthier, they consume more meat and higher meat consumption leads to diet-related health risks, land degradation, increased amounts of greenhouse gases, and pollution.

Knowing the risks involved, why do humans continue to eat meat and why has its consumption grown by 68% in the past fifty-seven years alone? Meat consumption is partially done out of habit. Meat has always been a part of human diets. It was the hunting part of hunter/gatherers. It is why delis exist. It used to be rare, expensive, and consequently highly coveted. Religions have imposed dietary restrictions on it to regulate what can be eaten and how it can be prepared. In fact, poultry was not considered a meat, technically, until religious dietary laws changed to incorporate it. For example, in Judaism, kashrut dietary laws prohibit the simultaneous consumption of dairy and meat products because it is unclean to prepare meat in its mother’s milk. When meat prices rose, less affluent Jews could no longer afford cow meat and many lived too far from the sea to fish. Kashrut laws extended to include chicken as a meat so that these poorer Jews could afford something special to eat on the Sabbath. Today, chicken is the number one most consumed meat in the United States, coming in at 87 pounds per person.

Meat’s consumption rates have risen steadily over the past fifty-seven years as Americans’ wallets are swelling and cheaper methods of meat production are being invented. In a New York Times article, foodie Mark Bittman states that the total meat supply in 1961 hovered at 71 million tons. In 2007, this number quadrupled to 284 million tons (Bittman WK1). In 1961, meat production was vastly different—the large majority of livestock grazed on family-owned farmland. As the demand for meat increased, factory farms became more and more prevalent. In the 1990s, for instance, pork company Smithfield began a system of total vertical integration in which they owned every part of the meat production process. They bred their pigs, filled them with antibiotics (just in case) and growth hormones, and slaughtered them in their own facilities. This greatly cut costs and allowed for them to sell pork at (almost) universally affordable prices. In a Capitalist system, this is exactly what a company should do—a small group of owners/capitalists own the means of production from birth to plate in order to meet market demands and gain a pretty penny. By making meat affordable, Americans were encouraged to buy more meat, which subsidized costs for further meat consumption. In fact, the demand for meat is so high that it is subsidized by the federal government. Cheap prices are a great incentive for virtually every product on the market and meat is no exception.

Additionally, meat quality has, in some ways, gone up. White meat in poultry became popular because it contains slightly less fat and fewer calories than dark meat (which has more vitamins) and as a result, poultry companies began creating the “chicken of tomorrow.” This chicken incorporated all of the desirable aspects in chicken meat—tender meaty breasts and minimal dark meat. This is also good capitalist practice, tailoring a product to the consumer’s wishes. This sounds too good to be true, the good parts of the animal at a very low cost is a carnivore’s dream! Unfortunately, this offer is too good to be true. Today, most meat comes from a factory, a dark damp room where animals are kept in such close quarters that they are often ankle-deep in feces, covered in insects, and prone to disease. But the externalities associated with factory-farming reach much deeper than the well-being of the animals.

Human health is at risk because of the amount of meat consumed. The saying you are what you eat comes into play here. The cow that allowed your hamburger to exist was fed hormones so it would grow larger in a shorter amount of time, preventive antibiotics, and a combination of grass, grain, corn, and soy. The cow processed all of this in its own body and when it was slaughtered, the hormones and antibiotics remained in the meat to be consumed by humans. A study conducted by Cornell University explains some of the detriments to using hormones in meat, stating,

“diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen drug used in the 1960s was withdrawn from use after it was found to increase the risk of vaginal cancer in daughters of treated women. Lifetime exposure to natural steroid hormone estrogen is also associated with an increased risk for breast cancer” (Ghandi).

A new breed of superbacteria, which are immune to antibiotics, has emerged due to the preventive measures taken to mitigate the diseases spread between animals in extremely close quarters. Many humans have become very sick as a result of this. The Cornell study goes on to say that “some of the major dairy states in US switched over to a new and improved method to test for antibiotic residues” and while more antibiotic residue was found, it is important to note that it is unclear whether the increase is from usage or more accurate testing methods (Ghandi).

As important as human health is, factory farming puts even more than human life at stake. The entire Earth has been dramatically affected by this change in livestock agriculture and consumption. According to Bittman, “These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases, and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy, and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rainforests” (Bittman WK1). Statistics stating exactly how detrimental factory farming is to the environment are all over the internet.

Consumercide.com, an alternative news blog, provides a comprehensive list of statistics indicating exactly what factory farmed meat is doing to the world. The amount of water needed to grow one pound of wheat, for example, is twenty-five gallons. The amount of water needed to grow one pound of California beef is a startling 5,000 gallons (Consumercide). At first, this seems surprising—factory farmed cattle do not drink that much in their very short lives! However, other factors must be taken into account, such as the amount of water required to grow the animal feed, wash the cows, and provide water for the factory farm overall. Additionally, the amount of corn and oats grown in the United States for livestock consumption far exceeds that of human consumption. Of all the corn in the United States, 20% is consumed by humans and 80% is consumed by livestock. 95% of oats in this country are also eaten by livestock (Consumercide).

Consumercide further hits this point home by stating that “number of people worldwide who will die as a result of malnutrition this year” is 20 million, but that the “number of people who could be adequately fed using land freed if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10%” is 100 million (Consumercide). The United States definitely has the land to grow food to feed millions of hungry people. In fact, one acre of land could be used to grow 40,000 pounds of potatoes, yet we choose to dedicate 56% of American farmland to beef production, which can only produce 250 pounds per acre (Consumercide). As the demand for meat increases, the amount of land required to meet this demand increases as well and as of today, 260 million acres of American forests have been cleared to grow animal feed and 75% of topsoil in the United States has been lost. The use of land for animal feed limits the country’s biodiversity as well as the diversity in nutrients for both the livestock and the humans who consume the livestock. Much of the rainforest has been destroyed to produce more meat resulting in roughly 1,000 species going extinct per year, creating even less biodiversity in the ecosystem (Consumercide).

One of the most alarming result of excessive meat consumption how quickly it drains the world’s oil supply. Bittman explains the connection between oil and meat, stating “like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally—like oil—meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible” (Bittman). The differences in oil consumption between a meat-centered diet and an herbivourous diet is so great that if every human on the planet consumed meat on a regular basis2, the world’s oil reserves would last just thirteen years, yet if every human became a vegetarian, the oil reserves would last 260 years (Consumercide). Factory-produced meat requires so many resources that 33% of all raw materials, including fossil fuels, forestry, mining, etc, are used for meat production. A vegetarian diet can be sustained using only 2% of raw materials (Consumercide).

All of the statistics found in this paper can be found by doing cursory research on internet search engines and yet this knowledge seems to be lost on the millions of people who start their day with bacon and end it with steak. Though the statistics in the previous paragraphs are daunting, pessimistic, and, frankly, terrifying, meat consumption is not a bad thing. Humans have been eating meat since we could stand upright and our bodies are, to some extent, made for animal consumption. Herbivores have flatter teeth while carnivores have sharper, pointier teeth that make it easy to tear through flesh. Humans have both types, indicating our natural ability to eat meat. The trick is to know where the limit is.

Today’s food justice movements have brought organic, local, grass-fed meat into grocery stores, making it easy for consumers to pick up a non-factory farmed dinner. This “good” meat is expensive, a big turn-off for shoppers, but the expense is well worth it. In most cases, the higher price equals higher quality. The animals are fed better, given space to walk around in the sunlight, and are not administered antibiotics or growth hormones—this type of meat lived and grew naturally. In some ways, the steep price is a good way to deter carnivores from consuming too much meat and instead steer them towards an omnivore’s lifestyle.

In Western Massachusetts, for instance, it is fairly easy to find local meat. Millstone Market in Sunderland is a small, locally owned grocery store that specializes in high quality meats. Whole Foods Market grocery store goes to great lengths to ensure the quality of their meat products. Even local dairy and eggs are found at virtually every grocery store and at the local Saturday farmers’ markets. Though American meat consumption has increased tremendously in the past fifty-seven years, that does not mean that Americans have to stop eating meat altogether. Instead, Americans need to learn how to eat meat. Americans need to understand the implications of their eating habits and take the externalities into account when planning their menus. Meat is okay, just not every day and definitely not factory farmed.

Works Consulted

Bittman, Mark. “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler .” New

York Times (2008): WK1. Web. 20 Mar 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview

/27bittman.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1>.

“Farm Animal Statistics: Meat Consumption.” The

Humane Society. The Humane Society, 30 Nov

2006. Web. 20 Mar 2011. <http://www.humanesociety.org/news/resources

/research/stats_meat_consumption.html>.

United States. Agricultural Factbook 2001-2002. ,

2002. Web. 20 Mar 2011. <http://www.usda.gov

/factbook/chapter2.htm>.

“Vegetarian Vs Meat Eating: Statistics on the

Destruction of Body & Planet.” Consumercide.

Consumercide, 2011. Web. 24 Mar 2011.

<http://www.consumercide.com/js/index.php/food-

supply/39-necessarily-vegetarian/379-how-to-win-

an-argument-with-a-meat-eater.html>.

1Meat, in this paper, includes fish and poultry.

2“On a regular basis” means at least once a day.