Background
You don’t have to be a food systems scholar to know that beef is one of the more controversial items on our plates. Gruesome clips from popular documentaries like Food Inc. or Cowspiracy might flash before your eyes, and rightfully so. The rise of a few agribusiness giants like Cargill and Tyson have converted the majority of the American beef industry into a conglomeration of factory farms, where not only are the animals treated poorly, but where production processes contribute to negative environmental and human health effects.
The USA is the largest global consumer and producer of beef. For this reason, we will be focusing largely on the domestic issues at hand, although there are also international dynamics at play like the deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for the creation of cattle pastureland. For more on this, visit our page on soy.
Spotlight issue: environmental degradation
Where to start with issues in the production and consumption of beef? In terms of environmental impact, the damage is rather apparent – cows take up a lot of space and use a lot of water. The runoff from their manure can cause eutrophication and dead zones in nearby water bodies. Additionally, they are not biologically designed to eat corn, which currently forms the bulk of their diet in large factory farms, causing them to bloat and emit a massive amount of methane. A very potent greenhouse gas, methane has twenty one times the global warming capacity of carbon dioxide.[1] Cattle are unfortunate accomplices to key issues like climate change, deforestation, and waterway contamination.
Spotlight issue: health
Not only does beef production hurt the environment we live in, it also directly affects our health. Along with the health risks that usually accompany a diet high in red meat like chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and some cancers, other dangers come from eating factory farmed meat. The cattle in these operations stand ankle deep in their own manure all day long and go to the slaughterhouse caked in manure[2], making it extremely difficult to ensure that it doesn’t get into the final meat product. Many pathogens like E. coli develop, become antibiotic resistant, and find their way into other food products, putting an even greater population at risk. Lastly, it’s extremely common for ranchers to pump their cows with growth hormones (namely the genetically modified recombinant bovine growth hormone manufactured by Monsanto), which can disrupt the human endocrine system upon consumption. But let’s not forget the people working in these factory farms who suffer the biohazadarous and emotional effects of spending all day every day in a slaughterhouse. Many of these workers tend to be of low-income background, just like the people who are consuming the most meat in our country from cheap places like McDonalds. Unfortunately, the nations poor are the ones suffering with the worst of the health impacts brought on by beef.
Spotlight issue: morality
We then come to the ethical questions of meat consumption – what about the cows themselves? We’ve already touched on the unlivable conditions of factory farms, where cattle are caged up for the entirety of their lives and treated as commodified objects rather than sentient beings. Sometimes cow feed consists of cow blood or other body parts. We have turned them into cannibals against their will. They are no longer animals, they’re machines.
Future Implications
So it seems to all come down to… do we eat it or not? This dichotomy between vegetarian/vegan and meat eater is extremely present in today’s society. However, just lowering your meat consumption can make a huge difference in meat demand. Some argue that the bioavailable iron and zinc in red meat is hard to get elsewhere, especially in areas of nutritional inadequacy, so strict vegetarianism would not be viable. Other alternatives include purchasing beef products that have been farmed humanely, including grass-fed labeled products for example. While these meats still require land input, agricultural techniques like rotational grazing lessen their impact greatly and improve quality of life for the cattle. Even here, though, many people take issue with the concept of slaughter, no matter how humane it may be. Take, for example, Bill and Lou, the two resident oxen at Green Mountain College in Vermont. When one of them was hurt, making them incapable of working, the school planned to slaughter the ox in order to provide food for the students in the dining hall. Various activists groups rallied around the issue with rage, claiming it was a crime to murder such a beloved animal, even though it was probably one of the most humanely raised beef animals on the market.[3] Even in the best-case scenario, there are still moral questions at hand. One exciting alternative to farmed beef is the concept of in-vitro beef[4], or meat grown in a lab. Although this might provoke a squirmy reaction to the image of a hamburger patty in a petri dish, this practice would dramatically reduce environmental impact and facilitate the monitoring of beef for pathogens, seeing as it will be grown in a sterile environment. It’s not yet economically viable, but a few years down the road it could solve many of our problems.
Footnotes
[1] Rachel Premack. “Meat is horrible.” The Washington Post, July 3, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/30/how-meat-is-destroying-the-planet-in-seven-charts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a5dd002dfe17.
[2] Evelyn B. Pluhar. “Meat and morality: Alternatives to factory farming.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23, no. 5 (2010): 455-468.
[3] Jess Bidgood. “Oxen’s Possible Slaughter Prompts Fight in Vermont.” The New York Times, October 28, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/oxens-possible-slaughter-prompts-fight-in-vermont.html.
[4] Pluhar. 463.
References
Bidgood, Jess. “Oxen’s Possible Slaughter Prompts Fight in Vermont.” The New York Times, October 28, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/oxens-possible-slaughter-prompts-fight-in-vermont.html.
Bidgood, Jess. “A Casualty Amid Battle to Save College Oxen.” The New York Times, November 12, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/vermont-college-euthanizes-one-ox-spares-another.html.
Keck, Nina. “Despite Protest, College Plans to Slaughter, Serve Farm’s Beloved Oxen.” Vermont Public Radio, October 19, 2012. Podcast.
Pluhar, Evelyn B. “Meat and morality: Alternatives to factory farming.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23, no. 5 (2010): 455-468.
Premack, Rachel. “Meat is horrible.” The Washington Post, July 3, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/30/how-meat-is-destroying-the-planet-in-seven-charts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a5dd002dfe17.
Riely, Andrew. “THE GRASS‐FED CATTLE‐RANCHING NICHE IN TEXAS.” Geographical Review 101, no. 2 (2011): 261-268.
Weyman-Jones, Laura. “INFOGRAPHIC: Save the Earth: – Go Vegan!” PETA Australia, June 5, 2017. https://www.peta.org.au/news/can-whats-on-your-plate-really-help-the-environment/.