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Defending Beef Introduction
Defending Beef Introduction
Defending Beef Introduction
Americans once raised cattle, pigs, and sheep on small, mixed farms
scattered around the country, sprinkled with handfuls of livestock.
Animal numbers were low and, correspondingly, Americans ate
dainty portions of animal fat and red meat. We were thin. Hyper-
tension, stroke, and heart disease rates were low. Environmental
damage from farming was minimal. Over the course of the 20th
century, however, everything changed for the worse. Livestock herds
ballooned. Cattle overgrazed. Red meat and animal fat became
abundant, cheap, and ubiquitous. Americans gorged themselves on
hamburgers, butter, and ice cream. The result: soil erosion, water
and air pollution, and skyrocketing rates of obesity and chronic
diet-related diseases.
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DEFENDING BEEF
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I ntro d u ction
for greater milk output (read: large bodies and huge udders) has vastly
increased per-animal production.3 At the beginning of the 20th century,
average US annual per-cow milk output was 2,902 pounds (348 gallons).
Today it is 22,774 pounds (2,734 gallons) per year. This is often touted
as a major victory for humanity. But the scale of the increase (more than
sevenfold) suggests selective breeding has been pushed to an extreme.
(Indeed, many of today’s mature dairy cows even have trouble walking,
something I have personally witnessed, with heavy heart, numerous
times.) The net effect of this change has been a substantial shrinkage of
the US dairy herd over the past century.
These factors, combined with the near disappearance from American
agriculture of oxen, mules, donkeys, and horses as animal draft power,
means there are fewer larger farm animals in the United States now than
there were a century ago.
For those of you who may still find this hard to believe, here are the
specific numbers. Since 1900, beef cattle numbers rose, but less than
people tend to assume, going from 67 million to 94 million. Pig numbers
have also gone up, but not much: In 1920, there were 60 million pigs; in
2018, 74 million. On the other hand, sheep numbers plummeted, going
from a high of 46 million in 1940 to 5 million today. Likewise, the dairy
cow herd shrank dramatically, from 32 million down to 9 million, over
the past century. And draft animals have gone from 22 million in 1900 to
just 3 million in 2002. All told, that means that while early-20th-century
farms and ranches had roughly 99 million head of cattle and 227 million
larger animals (including cattle), today they have 103 million cattle and
185 million larger animals. That’s a modest 4 percent increase in cattle
numbers and an overall 19 percent reduction in larger farm animals.
From an environmental standpoint, two issues are most relevant:
How many animals are in inventory, and, more important, by what
methods are they being raised? These factors will largely determine
ecological footprint—harmful or helpful. As we’ve just seen, there are
only slightly more cattle today than for much of the past century. At
the same time, cattle are being raised with more care: There is a bur-
geoning movement within agriculture to thoughtfully manage grazing.
This is increasingly transforming animal impact into a cornerstone of
regenerative agriculture.
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DEFENDING BEEF
From a diet and human health perspective, the central questions are:
What’s being consumed, and in what form? Are we eating real, whole,
unprocessed vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, eggs, fish, and meats or, in
contrast, “edible food-like substances,” as Michael Pollan calls them in
his book Food Rules? Americans today consume less beef and butter but
far more processed foods. Fast food, packaged snacks, and sweet drinks
for starters. We all know a bowl of potato chips is junk food whereas a
baked potato is satiating and nourishing. Similarly, a mass-produced hot
dog is wholly different from a steak. How much processed food one eats
is proving to be the most important variable for health. Whether a food
is healthful or harmful is also affected by how it was raised.
It’s essential to acknowledge these facts when we talk about meat.
If we recognize that total cattle numbers have been fairly stable and
beef consumption is down, it immediately casts serious doubt on the
all-too-common narrative that blames cattle and beef for our current
environmental and public health crises. I would not expect these facts, on
their own, to dissolve the concerns of beef ’s critics. But I hope clarifying
these questions at the outset will allow readers to consider this book with
an open mind.
I strongly dispute the charge that cattle and beef are responsible for
the globe’s environmental and human health problems. But aspects of
the popular narrative I mentioned at the outset are correct, and they need
immediate and sustained attention. Serious environmental degradation
the world over has been caused by agriculture, including the cattle and
beef sectors. Like much of American agriculture, the beef industry has
become too dependent on manmade inputs like insecticides, fertilizers,
hormones, and other pharmaceuticals. Until just the past few years, there
has also been widespread failure to grasp soil biology as the essential
foundation of truly regenerative farming. Many involved in mainstream
farming, including those raising cattle, have failed to prioritize generating
nutrient-rich, health-sustaining human foods. Simply put, industrializa-
tion has radically altered the way humans farm and eat, much of it for
the worse. These issues will be explored in this book.
Current US food and farm policies subsidize output. Much of what
is incentivized are destructive practices. Only a tiny portion of subsidies
encourage ecological farming methods. Those same policies foster excess
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