I read somewhere a few weeks ago that the average milk cow produces somewhere between 4 and 8 gallons of milk per day. This kind of freaked me out, so I did some Google “research” to see if that was right; my guess would have been more like 15-20 gallons. I have no idea why I thought that, except that I couldn’t imagine how anyone could make a profit selling milk at $3-6 per gallon when a cow can only produce a few gallons per day… doesn’t it cost a lot to raise and feed a cow? More reading showed that cows (duh!!) only produce milk after they’ve had a calf, so that reduces the percentage of time that a cow can give milk.
Glug glug glug!
Ducklings, I love milk. Love it, love it, love it. I can’t drink a gallon a day anymore, but I used to come pretty close on a regular basis. These days a half gallon will last me for several days, and if you add all the yogurt and cheese I eat…? Whew, I’m a one-man dairy sinkhole, and somehow the economics of milk never crossed my mind.
But shortly after I learned that, I learned that it takes something like 12 times the acreage to feed a meat-eater as it does to feed a vegetarian. I knew there was a difference, but the specific number was kind of shocking — and surely debatable.
The list of the environmental impacts of a meat diet are long: net CO2 emissions, water consumption, mountains of animal waste, energy input/output, and probably a few more. And I guess I knew all that, but I wasn’t making the connection and changing my habits much at all. And somehow over the past few weeks, the math has really stacked up into Big Thing that I’d never really seen before: choosing a vegetarian or a meat diet seems to be the personal decision that has the biggest impact on the environment.
A lot of people have a feverish attachment to meat, and I’ll readily agree that there ain’t nothin’ in the world quite like bacon. But… do I want to eat bacon every day? Even once a week? Nope, I’m more of a bacon-once-a-month kind of guy. And chicken? How often do I eat chicken that’s really any good at all? I eat out a lot (another pretty shitty environmental move, vegetarian or no), and most of the places I go are cheap; they definitely aren’t serving organic anything, let alone paying attention to the living conditions of the animals, etc.
But, I want to state for the record that I really don’t have an ethical problem with eating animals, per se. Cruelty bothers me, whether it’s “unecessary” or “necessary”, but there are definitely farmers out there who are doing their best to raise and slaughter animals in a way that isn’t barbaric. But you know what I do have an ethical problem with? PETA. I find their moral equivalence between baby seals, puppies, chickens, milk cows and human infants to be utterly perplexing and offensive… if you’re going that far, you might as well say that it’s also a high crime to kill and eat a carrot or a stalk of broccoli or yogurt bacteria. I’m also driven mad by the casual objectification of women in their ads… it’s thoroughly unhelpful to their cause, and preaching-to-the-choir at its worst.
So when I go out to eat, or when I make stuff at home, my decision-making process goes like this: “Imagine the Swimming Rama with Tofu and the Swimming Rama with Chicken have a real price tag on them, $6.95 versus $30*. Is the chicken version going to taste that much better?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and I happily nomnomnom away on the chicken. But usually the answer is “not even close”, and my love affair with deep-fried tofu deepens.
Tofu and peanut sauce!
So, I’m happy to wear leather, drink milk, eat eggs and honey, and eat the occasional BBQ piggie… but for the most part, I’m eating a lot of tofu and loving it. Someday soon I need to do a follow-up post on this, because a lot of people like meat a lot more than I do… I don’t think they’re deluded, but I do think that the “environment math” could be clearer in people’s mind when they make food choices.
* The real price is unknown, of course, because we don’t have environmental externalities reflected in the things we buy… $30 is a guess, and it’s probably too high, but I’d love to know the real numbers. The point isn’t really about money (I can afford $30 chicken), it’s making the conscious decision about whether the extra environmental hit is really going to make me any happier… and sometimes the answer is YES, but it’s less often than it used to be.
“Old coats often don’t fit today’s styles” goes the lament, and I’m sure that’s true. Woe betide the stylish lass who drops $40k on a stoat coat, only to find it dèclassè in mere months! This angst has clearly settled on the poor citizen shown at left above, who regains her firmness of purpose after a few clams have been spent revivifying her fuzzy carapace.
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