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Cowspiracy


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Most of our refrigerators stand as monuments to animal cruelty and environmental destruction. 

That’s right, all that chicken, hamburger, steak, bacon, eggs, butter, yogurt, cheese and milk occupying shelf space in your fridge may cause more damage to our planet than the transportation industry. 

Are your taste buds going numb by this terribly inconvenient truth prospect? Mine did last week after viewing the 2014 documentary “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.” It is excellent, often humorous, and morally speaking, refreshingly astringent. We need to heed its message.

Spoiler alert: Joining the “Cowspiracy” roundup will require sacrifices on our part. Big sacrifices. But in my view, there is really no way around it.

Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, co-writers and producers, spent a year gathering information from a number of organizations including the Environmental Working Group, NASA, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the International Livestock Research Institute, the United Nations and its Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Worldwatch Institute. They also went to newspapers such as The Guardian and the International Business Times to discover the far-reaching impacts of animal agriculture.

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Here are samplings of their findings

  • More than 70 billion farm animals are reared annually worldwide and more than six million are killed for food every hour.
  • Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56 percent of water in the U.S, whereas U.S. households’ share totals 5 percent.
  • Livestock covers 45 percent of the Earth’s surface.
  • Cows produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day. Meanwhile, U.S. food animals produce 7 million pounds of excrement every 60 seconds.
  • One hamburger requires 660 gallons of water to produce -- the equivalent of two months worth of showers. Simultaneously, 477 gallons of water are required to produce one pound of eggs; with 900 gallons needed for cheese.
  • The leading causes of deforestation in the Amazon are livestock and feed crops.
  • Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction.

The terrible cost in terms of human lives must also be factored into this equation. In the past 20 years, 1,100 activists have been killed in Brazil, according to watchdog group Catholic Land Pastoral.

Notre Dame Sr. Dorothy Stang was one of them. An environmentalist dedicated to preserving the rainforest, Stang had incurred the wrath of cattle ranchers because of her outspoken activism. She was murdered in 2005.

 

http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/cowspiracy-may-leave-you-overhauling-your-fridge

 

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Hunt your meat like our ancestors. More humane plus you'll have a greater appreciation from where that roast/chop/whatever comes from. NO antibiotics, growth hormones etc. too. Use the hide, and the organs...nothing to waste.

Dirty your own hands.

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The extension of the cowspiracy line of thought must lead us to the next set of obvious questions:

-How many plants are raised for food worldwide, and how many are killed every hour for food?
-What percentage of water is used for growing plants for human consumption?
-What percentage of the earth's surface is used to grow plants for food?
-How much methane and CO2 (greenhouse gas) is produced by the unused portions of plant crops that are improperly composted or simply discarded and left to rot?
-How much water does is take to produce a pound of flour or a pound of whole wheat bread?
-If denuding the Amazon rain forest to create space for raising livestock and livestock feed is wrong, is it not also wrong to clear cut the same Amazon rain forest to create space for crops that humans directly consume?

If the costs, environmental and otherwise, of raising animals for meat for human consumption causes concern, then those same cost associated with raising plants for human consumption must be raised simultaneously.

 



 

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it takes a thousand gallons of water to produce a gallon of milk and we're told taking shorter showers will help save water.

 

duh

The thousand gallons is a guesstimate that includes the water the cow drank, the water to wash the milking machinery, wash the barn the cow was milked in, wash the truck the milk was hauled in, the list goes on.....  

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http://www.madcowboy.com/01_BookOP.000.html

 

BACKGROUND:

In April of 1996, Mr. Lyman (former cattle rancher and now President, Voice for a Viable Future)) was invited to appear on Oprah to discuss Mad Cow disease, food production, and the rendering process. He was part of a discussion of experts, including an expert from the beef industry, about food safety in the U.S. This included a discussion of potential health risks from e-colii and mad cow disease (which only weeks before was making headlines in Britain and throughout the world). When Mr. Lyman explained that cows are being fed to cows, Ms. Winfrey seemed to be repulsed by this thought, and exclaimed that it had juststopped her cold from eating another hamburger.[TRANSCRIPT]

The show aired on a Monday, and beef futures -- which had been in a steep decline due to drought, over-supply and a number of complex factors -- fell further on Tuesday. (Pundits referred to this as the "Oprah crash.") The cattle industry was apparently outraged, and pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV advertising in retaliation. Pressured by television executives to mollify the cattle industry, Oprah offered to do an hour-long segment in which experts from the cattle business could debate Mr. Lyman on her show. However, the cattlemen refused to appear on the show if Lyman were going to be present. They did not desire such a debate.

So, Oprah subsequently permitted a cattle business "expert" to appear and speak for ten minutes on her show, presenting the meat industry "side" in which the meat industry could say whatever they wished, secure in the knowledge that no opposing or questioning viewpoint would be heard.

A short time later, some Texas cattlemen, led by billionaire Paul Engler, owner of Cactus Feeders, Inc., filed suit against Lyman, Oprah, Harpo Productions (which produces Oprah) and King World Syndicator (King World was released from the suit by summary judgement). The lawsuit alleged Lyman and Oprah had violated a Texas law which forbids someone from "knowingly making false statements" about agricultural business. The cattlemen have alleged that Oprah is responsible for the decline in beef futures.

The unprecedented trial took place in Amarillo, Texas -- right in the middle of cattle ranching country, from where the jury has been selected -- despite numerous requests from the defendants to move the trial to another part of Texas.

In his best-selling book, "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat," Howard goes into greater detail about the trial from an insider's perspective.


VERDICT:

On February 29th, 1998, the Texas jury found then Humane Society of the US program director Howard Lyman and Oprah Winfrey not liable for comments made on the national show about eating beef.

Mr. Lyman, now the President of "Voice for a Viable Future," spent 6 weeks in Amarillo fighting "food disparagement" and libel charges against him. Until the jury rendered its judgement, Lyman and associates were barred from speaking about the lawsuit as a result of a court-imposed gag order.

Lyman, who spent much of his profesional life RAISING cattle, has been traveling the globe year-round since 1991, speaking on health, environment & animal issues, stated:

"Today...I breathe more easily, knowing that a vigorous debate about potential dangers to our food supply--ranging from E.coli to pfiesteria to salmonella to Mad Cow disease -- is permissable. Lawsuits like this stifle speech about matters that have implications for the health and welfare of every American consumer. At a time when threats to food safety are arguably greater than ever -- threats exacerbated by intense confinement conditions that abet the spread of disease, and by controversial feeding practices -- we need a free and open discussion about these matters."

But the battle isn't over. Thirteen states, including Texas, have passed laws designed to silence and intimidate those who expose unsafe and unhealthy factory farm and slaughterhouse practices. These so-called "food disparagement" laws make it a crime to criticize food and how it is produced.

In Britain, 22 people died from Mad Cow disease. In the U.S., over 9,000 deaths occur yearly due to food-bourne illnesses such as E.coli. Unsafe food is deadly. It is time to challenge these laws. It is time to stand up to those who put their own economic interests above the public's safety.

"Within a few months after the Oprah show aired and caused a firestorm of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration announced pending regulations to eliminate the feeding of ruminants to ruminants. The specific content of the regulations were delayed until after the presidential elections of 1996, most likely to avoid offending the livestock industry. Finally, the August 1997 ban on feeding ruminants to ruminants, a necessary but insufficient measure to stave off the spread of Mad Cow disease to America, went into effect." (from "Mad Cowboy," p. 16)

"SHOW TRIAL", by Howard Lyman (an Oct. 1999 article about the trial published online by Satya Magazine)

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Every population on earth, human, animal, and even some plants, grows until it can't grow anymore, until some catastrophic event, be it food shortage, disease, climate change, or meteor strike, smacks it down. Some go extinct, others bounce back, humans seem to bounce back.

I don't deny climate change, it is here and it is real, I don't think we can stop it. It has happened before, the ice ages are proof of that.

We have had one hell of a run. There are more people on earth now than ever before. We are feeding most of them. Life expectancies are going up in most of the world. A nuclear event could destroy a big chunk of the world and poison the rest of it, but I still think there would be pockets of human survival.

Carbon credits are the modern equivalent of throwing virgins in the volcano.   

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I don't deny climate change, I don't think we can stop it.

Philistine!  Heretic!

How can you say such a thing when 98.6% of all the world's scientists who cover 54.7% of the earth's surface and have consumed 831 gallons of water for each page of each research paper (not including irrigation to grow the trees, mind you) that conclusively prove that man's effect on the environment could melt the ice caps and glaciers such that the Fuji islands might be submerged by approximately 7.8559 meters of water, possibly by 2060, or even maybe sooner according to the most accurate of all the computer models!!!

Edited by Thaddeus Kosciuszko
Deleted 3 significant figures from the 'meters of water' number.
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Philistine!  Heretic!

How can you say such a thing when 98.6% of all the world's scientists who cover 54.7% of the earth's surface and have consumed 831 gallons of water for each page of each research paper (not including irrigation to grow the trees, mind you) that conclusively prove that man's effect on the environment could melt the ice caps and glaciers such that the Fuji islands might be submerged by approximately 7.8559 meters of water, possibly by 2060, or even maybe sooner according to the most accurate of all the computer models!!!

I never thought I'd say say this to the great Thaddeus .......".If you can't dazzle em with brilliance....baffle em with......" 

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 instead of posting dumb stuff

Actually RG has made an intelligent and germane point.

Water is indeed a resource, but it is a renewable resource.  It's not as if the 660 gallons of water used to make hamburger or the 900 gallons of water used to make cheese are used once and utterly destroyed forever.  Some water goes into the product, of course, because water is one of the ingredients.  But the rest of it - or a major portion of it - is recycled through a waste treatment plant or some other method and returned to the environment.

So while 660 gallons of water is used to make hamburger (assuming we accept the quantity as accurate), comparatively little water is consumed in the process.  The balance becomes available, at some point, to be used again and again just like any other renewable resource.

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Actually RG has made an intelligent and germane point.

Water is indeed a resource, but it is a renewable resource.  It's not as if the 660 gallons of water used to make hamburger or the 900 gallons of water used to make cheese are used once and utterly destroyed forever.  Some water goes into the product, of course, because water is one of the ingredients.  But the rest of it - or a major portion of it - is recycled through a waste treatment plant or some other method and returned to the environment.

So while 660 gallons of water is used to make hamburger (assuming we accept the quantity as accurate), comparatively little water is consumed in the process.  The balance becomes available, at some point, to be used again and again just like any other renewable resource.

It is important to use good finishing salt on meat dishes, too.  :P

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oh wow, so no worries about droughts or depleting aquifers. it rains and we can desalinate the ocean

 

idiots

Well, it matters where the rain is.  At the end of the day, though, it is a resource-hungry world, so we want the end product.  If the water is available and for sale and gets the job done and the finished product is what we want, then the use of that resource really isn't a big deal.  Trade-offs, like most areas in life.

This makes me want a burger now, but I am just going to have resource-intensive roasted vegetables for lunch instead.

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Well if we all went vegan, there would be 70 billion less farm animals born every year. While some farm animals are treated inhumanly, most of those 70 billion enjoy some life. For example most milk cows are treated rather well. It would be nice if most eggs came from free-range chickens.

This is not true

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oh wow, so no worries about droughts or depleting aquifers. it rains and we can desalinate the ocean

 

idiots

So, are you giving up meat, then?  That is kind of crazy, you know.

I am watching Cowspiracy right now, btw.  So far, some smelly hippie narrates it, but it is just a collection of dire statements and warnings.  Ominous music plays in the background.  

I still want a burger, but my veggies are almost done.

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Actually RG has made an intelligent and germane point.

Water is indeed a resource, but it is a renewable resource.  It's not as if the 660 gallons of water used to make hamburger or the 900 gallons of water used to make cheese are used once and utterly destroyed forever.  Some water goes into the product, of course, because water is one of the ingredients.  But the rest of it - or a major portion of it - is recycled through a waste treatment plant or some other method and returned to the environment.

So while 660 gallons of water is used to make hamburger (assuming we accept the quantity as accurate), comparatively little water is consumed in the process.  The balance becomes available, at some point, to be used again and again just like any other renewable resource.

Yes, but you can't deny that the water was horribly inconvenienced in the whole process.

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yeah clog up your guts with meat. are you the same guy who craws about not having a television in every thread about TV shows?

No, I'm not.  

 

Tell you what.  When and if you make it to my age then you can start telling me about diet.  In the meantime stuff it.  It tastes better stuffed.  Mmmmmmm stuffed cheesburger.

Edited by maddmaxx
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I love dairy, beef, fish, pork, duck, shellfish, lamb, elk, chicken, quail, <insert random meat animal here> . Just can't imagine a world without really enjoying it. 

This thread has me craving a cornish game hen.  It may be time to enjoy some baby chickens.  Yummy.

Most of the population will not change a bit. Everything will continue to get consumed, until we are forced to stop consuming. I am already way ahead of many with my habits.  With so many people jumpin in on this Paleo diet thing, the problem will grow worse. Grass fed beef is a hot item lately. 

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don't you find it disturbing that the sierra club, greenpeace etc have been bullied into keeping silent about cattle farming?

Were they bullied?  I think not.  I think big beef bought them off with truck-fulls of hush money to never mention them again.  I don't think Greenpeace, SC, and the like are composed of primarily vegetarians.

I really don't think there are that many vegetarians out there, really.  I think most of them are like christians in that they self-identify as such when it is convenient, but act another way when they are driving on the back roads and see a tasty cow by the roadside that they just have to stop and eat.

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